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Sunday, May 22, 2016

Making It To Summer Part 4: Beach Day!

Welcome welcome friends!

This is the last post in my Making It To Summer series - a series filled with tips and products to help you make it to the final bell signaling the start of summer!
Today is all about something I am super excited to start doing in my classroom - Beach Day!!


After visiting The Ron Clark Academy last month, I started looking for opportunities to make learning come alive for my kids.  If you follow me on Instagram, then you'll know I turned my classroom into an "ocean" earlier this month when we did Shark Week.

When I started looking at what we were going to do at the end of the year to review all that we have learned this year, my Just Beachy End of Year Review Centers inspired me to turn my classroom into a beach!  

So off to Dollar Tree to load up on supplies...

Centers supplies
Small buckets were a set of 3 for $1

Tablecloth - "ocean water"
Palm Tree Decor
Chevron InnerTube (from Walmart)

Leis - packs of 6 for $1 - each kiddo will get one

Cups and drink umbrellas - I have asked parents for fresh fruit to put into the cups with drink umbrellas.  We will also have goldfish, water and lemonade for our beachy snack.

Photo booth supplies!  I found the awesome beach backdrop at Party City for about $7 and this will hang in my room to be a backdrop (pictured below) for our photo booth area.  Hula skirts, fun beach sunglasses and beach toys will complete the photo booth.  I'll bring a big bucket from home to put all the supplies in.

The beach scene setter is huge!!  The two large panels just about complete covered the cubbies in our classroom which was perfect and the exact place I wanted to hang it!  I used binder clips to hang it - so I can hang it the day before and just pull the scene setter up in the morning so they can put their book bags and such in the cubbies, then pull it down to make our backdrop.

Now, what are all the snorkel masks and sand scoops for?  These are going to be used for centers of course!
For my Scuba Diving For Inflections ELA center, the kids will get to wear the goggles while they are working in the center.  I only purchased 4 goggles, so that center will be limited to 4 kids at a time.
Note: the goggles are made to cover the nose, I just small scissors and cut the nose part off the bottom so they could breathe while they are working and wearing their goggles.

The small buckets will allow the kids to sort the cards while working.

For Digging Up Facts & Opinions, I got these large sand scoops from Dollar Tree so the kids could sort the facts and opinions cards on the scoops instead of in the buckets.



In addition to our photo booth scene setter helping set the beach mood, I'm also going to have a beach scene video going on YouTube so we can transport ourselves to the beach with the waves crashing and palm trees swaying.  The video is 3 hours long so I won't have to keep restarting the video all day - just a couple times.  



Wanna keep your video ad-free?  Head over to The Brown Bag Teacher's blog with a couple of websites and browser add-ons you can use to keep your YouTube videos safe for young eyes and ears!

My Just Beachy Centers are perfect for creating your own beach day or just for reviewing concepts at the end of the year with a beach theme.  I've used these centers for a couple years now, but am so excited to take it to a new level!





If you stayed with me through all of this - then you deserve a freebie!
Click the image below to grab my Beach Day booklet cover.  I took all the center sheets I wanted my kiddos to complete during Beach Day and copied/stapled them as a booklet so they don't lose their sheets.

The file is editable - download as a PowerPoint file from Google Sheets and you can edit the text box with your name, beach name, a place for students to record their name, or whatever floats your boat!

What fun activities do you have planned for the last days of school?





1 comment:

  1. These are so good. the kids who made it are so creative. They are very so good in making it. Now it's time to avail water bottle for more information.

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