Tar Beach : C (Dragonfly Books)

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Third Grade Lesson

First Second Grade Lesson

Make a Tar Beach Quilt

The Teacher makes a drawing of a stick figure girl with a dress. This will be used later with the entire class to fill in the main character's name, thoughts, feelings, and actions. Her name will be written on her dress. Her thoughts will be written beside her head. Her feelings will be written close to her heart. Her actions will be listed close to her feet. This will be done on a large sheet of chart paper and placed in an area of the room so that it will be visible to all of the class, and so that it can be used when discussing these parts of the story.

Take a picture walk through the book, Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold. Predict what we think the book will be about. Read the book, Tar Beach, aloud together. Predicting what will happen next while reading.

On a map of New York state first locate New York City, then Manhattan and finally the George Washington Bridge (which connects New Jersey and New York). This bridge was built in 1931 and is one of the first suspension bridges in the United States.

Two Activities to match this book are found on CDROM # 4

-Sequence Sentence Strips (1-3)
Sentence strips that match the story, The Missing Beach Ball. You can place these in a pocket chart and have your students place them in the correct order or you may choose to use these to retell the story to your students.

- Clifford and The Beach Ball Retell Fill In The Blank
Student activity sheet. Student uses word bank to fill in the blanks of a retell. This would make a great follow-up activity to the pocket chart sentence strip sequence above.(1-3)

Click here to learn more about this CDROM

Seashells, Crabs and Sea Stars

The Big Book - Click to learn more

Book this book in your Listening Center - Click to learn more!

Rainbow Fish to the Rescue! - BIG BOOK

The book

The Rainbow Fish and Dazzle the Dinosaur

Treat your class to this VHS - click to learn more!

Now for the ideas!

http://atozteacherstuff.com/lessons/rainbowfish.shtml - Find three good
ideas here!

http://www.fi.edu/fellows/fellow8/dec98/games/slidepuzzle/rainpuzzle.html - A
Virtual Game for Your Class to play!

Rainbow Fish:
Read the book and then have the children paint fish
shaped papers. When the paint is dry glue on a foil scale. 

Coffee Filter Rainbow Fish Craft

Rainbow Fish Paper Craft

Triangle Fish Shapes Craft

Rainbow Fish Party Planning Guide

Great Ideas Here

A Lesson

Make a Rainbow Fish Cake for your class!

Click here for many great lesson ideas

Print Bookmarks

Make a Beach in a Bag with Your Class

Fun Beach Activities for Kids

More Beach Ideas!

Make your room sing with beach tunes!

*Pretend to "sunbathe" on large sheets of paper "towels" (use large newsprint or grocery bags but to lie flat.) Help children to feel comfortable to make designs on the paper that will become their "towels". They can even draw "Me" pictures on their paper and outline their bodies by helping each other. Children can decorate their "Me Towels" by using markers, crayons etc.  They might even cut and paste real material scraps for bathing suits.

Build a sandcastle - get some tips and inspiration from some expert sandcastle builders

* Sea Shells! Write the words BIG and LITTLE on two pieces of paper. Children can sort shells accordingly. Draw a sample size to help non-readers. Set out a book of shells so older children can find matches. Very young children will simply enjoy examining the shells. Talk about the colors of shells and how the sun has bleached them.

Hawaiian Beach Scenes:
Give the children each a sheet of light blue construction paper. Let them make "beaches" by brushing glue across the bottoms of their papers and sprinkling sand on the glue  (use white sand, if available). Then let them glue on small shells and precut sun shapes, palm tree shapes, beach ball shapes, etc. to complete their beach scenes

I like to make each student in my class a goodie bag to take home at the end of the year. I put a poem on it. I usually spend $25.00 for a class of 24. The bags include a beach ball, bubbles, a fancy pen, some candy, a notepad, and a few other goodies. You can get all of this stuff very cheap and in bulk at Oriental Trading. Click the banner to view the site! World's Biggest Toybox

Make Beach Party Cups With Your Class

Sand Cake Be sure to pile this cake into a beach bucket and serve with a plastic shovel! This project is rated VERY EASY to do. What You Need 2 Packages (3.5 to 4 oz. each) vanilla-flavored instant pudding 4 cups milk 1 container (8 oz.) nondairy whipped topping 1 box (10 1/2 oz.) miniature chocolate-chip cookies 2 cups vanilla-wafer cookie crumbs, divided Shell and or pebble shaped candies

How To Make It Prepare pudding using the 4 cups milk, according to package directions. Using rubber scraper, fold in the whipped topping, then fold in chocolate chip cookies. Spoon half of the pudding mixture into a clean (preferably new) 2 1/2 quart plastic beach bucket. Sprinkle with half of the vanilla cookie crumbs. Repeat layers. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours to soften cookies. Decorate with candy shells and pebble candies. Refrigerate until ready to serve. When placing on table put sand, sea shells, and plastic fish around the bottom of bucket for a cool centerpiece.

There are so many things you can do with a Beach Ball!
Check it out!

Write out the numbers on the top and bottom sections. Throw the ball gently to a child and they have to add the numbers where there thumbs are.

Another game is to sit in a circle and count to a specific number. Whoever says that number has to go to the center of the circle. Keep going till there are two left. Everyone yells showdown and they play till we we have a winner and winner number two ( no losers). I have done this with counting by 2's, 5's, 10's, days of the week, months, etc. Easy and quick and they really like it a lot!

Check out this Beach Ball Game

Beach Ball-put words on the beach ball. Toss and use a word in a sentence.

Don't forget to read a Beach Ball Book!
Click on a book to learn more!

_____ Grade Was a Ball! - Cover a bulletin board with a "beachy" background. Include a sun, water, and sand. Bounce around a beach ball one day in class and discuss what a "ball" the year has been. As you pass the ball to a each student have them discuss what they liked best about the year. Then cut out large circles for everyone in your class. Have the students color the white balls to resemble a beach ball. After they have colored their ball, have them place a piece of white lined paper in the center of the ball. Have the students write about their favorite experience in grade ____. Then place the balls onto the beach scene.

Make a Beach Ball Bead Craft With Your Class

The Teaching Heart End of the Year Packet has a few ideas to use with a Beach or Beach Ball Theme!

Beach Ball Add & Subtract Facts Memory

To Play:  Played like old fashion memory.  Break your students into teams of 2-4.  Your students mix the cards up and then lay the cards face down in rows.  To play they take turns in a clockwise fashion.  The first student turns over a card and then turns over another card.  If they make a match, they keep the cards and go again until they do not make a match.  If they don’t make a match, the next person goes.  Play until all the cards are gone.  The student with the most cards wins.

All materials need to make this center are found in the End of the Year Packet

Beach Ball Color a Rhyme

Page one is yours to read.  Give page two to the students in your class.  Read each one and have students volunteer the color word that fits the rhyme.  Then the class may color in the correct number of colored balls on their page.  When you are finished reading each little rhyme, you can evaluate how well your students were listening by being sure they colored the balls the correct color.

All materials need to make this center are found in the End of the Year Packet

More Beach Ideas With An Hawaii Theme!

Have a party on the last day of school to celebrate all the learning that has gone on throughout the year. You can make it a Hawaii Theme.

Oriental Trading Company, Inc.
Great place to get crafts, games, decorations, and more for your Hawaii party!
Click on Luau when you get there! Some suggestions would be...
12 Poly Hawaiian Leis for $1.95
1 6-Ft. Metallic Palm Tree $3.00
12 Vinyl Porcupine Ball Fish
19” x 20” Foam Fish Dart Board
A Dozen 10” Inflate Tropical Creature-Shaped Beach Balls 4 $10.00
24 1-Oz. Mini “Aloha” Bubbles $5.00
And there is so much more at the site!

Some Great Links To Help You With The Theme!

Hawaiian Luau - A collection of craft ideas, games and recipes for having a Hawaiian Luau in your classroom.
Hawaiian Recipe Index - make a few of these for your party! A good idea is to have each student bring in a dish!
Hawaii Maui No Ka Oe - A collection of lesson plans for teaching about Maui, Hawaii. Topics include the Valley Isle, whaling, water, flora, and Maui's people. Lessons include reproducibles
Hawaii No Ka Oi - A lesson plan for teaching the names of the Hawaiian islands. Lesson includes a mnemonic song
Find Your Name in Hawaiian
Hula - Hawaii's Art and Soul Read about the Hula and listen to The Sounds of the Hula.
Hawaiian Engangered Animals Coloring Book - Click on a picture, print it out and color it.
Map of Hawaii - A blackline reproducible map of the state of Hawaii

Hula Hand Puppets
Use brown paper lunch sacks to make hula dancer hand puppets. Cut 5-inch fringes along the open ends of the sacks. Then pass out the flat sacks and help the children draw faces on the bottom parts. Let them glue small flower stickers or bits of colored paper under their hula dancer faces to make leis. Then play library recordings of Hawaiian songs(or use any appropriate music) and let groups of children take turns moving their hand puppets to the music while the others play rhythm instruments.

Aloha Song : Sung to: "Happy Birthday"
Aloha to you,
Aloha to you,
Aloha, hello,
Aloha to you.

Aloha to you,
Aloha to you,
Aloha, goodbye,
Aloha to you.

Explain that aloha is the Hawaiian way of saying both "hello" and "goodbye"
.

Hula Skirt:
Turn a grocery sack into a hula skirt!
1. Cut open the front or back of a large paper grocery sack. Then cut out
the bottom of the sack.
2. Flatten the sack out, then fold down 3 inches from the top.
4.Wrap the skirt around your waist and tape it securely.

Leigh
What You Need:
Yarn (long enough to reach around children's necks)
Tissue Paper
What You Do:
Cut out squares of different colored tissue paper and punch a hole through the middle (you can use a pencil or hole punch). Then let the children string the paper onto the yarn creating a great Leigh. Some children will use all one color, some will vary their colors, some will make unique patterns, one thing that is for sure is that they all will be unique

It is unlikely that you will be able to take your class on a field trip to Hawaii. With the ideas above and some of these below, you can bring Hawaii to them!

Sounds of Hawaii

Play this CD for your class - about $5 at Amazon - click to learn more!

The Island-Below-The-Star

Aloha, Dolores

Hawaii Is a Rainbow (A Kolowalu Book)

Disney's Sing Along Songs - Beach Party at Walt Disney World