Showing posts with label fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fun. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

FEBRUARY: National Snack Month

It's National Snack Month! Yum! Yum! Yum! Nom! Nom! Nom!

How do you commemorate such an occasion?

NOTE: Before you serve ANY food in the classroom, be sure to check with your school administration AND your head custodian.

1. You can always serve your students a snack which, for convenience but more expensive, can be anything bite-size and pre-packaged. Older students, like Middle School and High School students, get a kick out of anything worth eating. If you feel like you can spare some money, buy those pre-packaged snacks.

2. Healthier options: Slice apples, oranges, and bananas. Serve raisins, grapes, peanuts (be careful of food allergies), etc. This works better for classes that do not change every hours. You can purchase pre-packed apples, carrots, and celery as well, but that also can get expensive.

3. Crackers. Buy crackers by the bulk and these can easily be shared among students. If you want to get extra crafty, head to lunch tables or outside under a tree and have the students share cheese spread. Cracker recipes can also find healthy recipes.

4. Blogger It's Taylor Made made fruit kabobs for her Yo-Gabba-Gabba children party


5. Buy some bread, peanut butter, jelly, and wah-lah. Use cookie cutters to make their own fun shapes.

Lastly, consider making a classroom consensus. Divide students into the four major food groups: Fruits, Proteins, Dairy, Vegetables, Grains and having each group create a questionnaire that would help create a consensus of popular snacks for each group. Then offer the students an opportunity to vote on one snack that you can serve.



Of course, I imagine doing this lesson if you have an unlimited budget.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

NOVEMBER: National "unfriend" Day


Technically National Unfriend Day is not something official, but when a celebrity with his own talk show, who was once on a popular Los Angeles radio station, and is known by face and name, the likes of Jimmy Kimmel can make anything happen.

(Just give it some time before this occasion gets posted on Wikipedia)

For example, he can get the California (soon-out-of-office) State Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to (humorously) be part of the Unfriend Day occasion:



How would this occasion be applied to educators?

I suggest to take this time to discuss social networking and the pro and cons of "friending" and "unfriending" people online. This would also be a great opportunity to discuss with your students how we do this outside the social networking world and how that effects people in our society.

Discuss the meaning of friendship and what it means in person and what it means online. For example, my nephew accepted the "friend request" from someone who says is annoying at his school. He explained to me that although this kid is annoying at school, the kid is not harmful and does not disrespect his peers. For those reasons, he accepted the classmate's request.



Address the benefits of social networking, and how people abuse it causing people to "unfriend" others.

Some people get offended when others "delete" people from their social networking profiles. Perhaps create activities of how this would reflect the person who did the deleting and the person who was deleted.

There is so much to cover regarding social networking, and as the internet grows and network connections expands, considering "unfriend" Day. As stated in this CNN.com article:

"Facebook was once the social networking site we chose over MySpace to connect with our real friends; but over the years, many of us have accumulated dozens, if not hundreds, of Facebook friends that are, in fact, not actually our friends."

Something to think about.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

September: Yabba, Dabba, Dooo!

Before they were identified in a popular song among our youth ("Google" Young Money performing Bed Rock), The Flintstones was quite a family.

It seems September 30, 2010 marks the 50th Anniversary of Hannah-Barbera's The Flintstones family.



Try watching an episode of The Flintstones and compare it to animated televisions families like The Simpsons, The Jetsons, and The Proud Family

Discuss family values.

Compare and describe the animation.

Explore characterization.

And, if you're thinking about using the 1994 The Flinstone's movie, uhm, may I suggest just viewing this clip:



Okay...that's all I have for now. Remember, Yabba-Dabbah-Dooo!

Sunday, September 19, 2010

September 19: Talk like a Pirate Day


It is true. Historically Pirates (and, well, in recent news as well) do not necessarily have the most positive past (Article: A Brief History of Pirates), but it seems that September 19 is International Talk Like A Pirate Day (Argggh!) You can even consider having Pirates in the Classroom.

Maybe your students would consider this minute video about making a pirate ship: Making the Pirate Ship — History.com Video