End of the Year Theme Days: Beach Day
After 2020, I almost forgot what to do at the end of a school year. Ha! I have done a lot of different things to try to create extra entertainment during a crazy time. Maybe it’s always like this and I don’t remember but it seemed like the kids were OVER IT much earlier than normal. The whole fourth quarter felt like a fight. So, I knew I really had to do something to keep their attention. We also had to keep instruction going. Ultimately, I settled on theme days. Everybody (me) loves a good theme.
After chatting with my co-workers, we settled on doing themes for the last 7 days of school.
Day 1 Beach Day
Let’s be real, we chose this because we all wished we were at the beach. I still wish that. We asked students to bring a beach towel if they wanted to and to wear tropical colors. I hit the Dollar Tree and got leis and some lemonades. Once our day started, I found a YouTube video with an ocean scene and sounds. They all laid out on their beach towels and we took a good chunk of time to just read for fun. I gave them all lemonade to sip while they read if they wanted it.
We still had to teach our reading curriculum, so that was the one part of the day that wasn’t themed. Boring, but such is life. For writing, we read the book Hello, Ocean to talk about sensory details. Not all my students have been to the beach, so we stopped and really talked about what the girl saw, felt, smelled, heard, and tasted at the beach. It’s always important to ensure our kids have necessary background knowledge about a prompt before expecting them to write. Once we were done with the book, they wrote about their trip to the beach. I let them be as crazy creative as they wanted, and they really enjoyed the limitless options.
For math, we knew the kids needed more practice with telling time. I saw the opportunity to put this into a real-world context for them to practice with. They also struggle with the idea of time being continual and that foundation for elapsed time. They had to read and analyze a beach vacation itinerary. We talked about what an itinerary is and why someone would have one for a vacation. They filled in a.m. and p.m. on half of the itinerary and then used it to answer some questions. They had to find the time from the clock on the itinerary to explain what the family was doing at that time. They also had to read the digital time for an activity and then draw the hands on the clock. This is where most of our math time was spent.
Then we did some normal math group rotations but instead of them meeting with me, they dug through the sand for numbers to add or subtract. I printed number cards and hid them in a kiddie pool full of yellow/white shredded paper. This would also work with blue for water, but the Dollar Tree didn’t have blue, so I used what I had available. The kids came over, dug out two numbers and then plugged them into the number sentence. They had three addition and three subtraction problems on their worksheet. This was REALLY good practice for them, particularly with remembering which number should go first when subtracting. With it being the last week of school, they needed movement and really loved this activity. But they also still needed practice on those foundational skills. Of all our themed days, I think Beach Day was my favorite! Fun, festive, and purposeful.
The math activities I mentioned can be found in my Teachers Pay Teachers store if you want to create a Beach Day for your kiddos! Beach Themed Math Activities Time and Adding and Subtracting by AKA Miss Wells (teacherspayteachers.com) With love, Erin, aka Miss Wells
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