20 Ways to Use Playdough in the Classroom

Playdough can be one of the most useful tools in the classroom, but it is often overlooked.  Playdough is cheap to buy and easy to make, and brings out creativity and learning  Here are 20 different ways to use playdough in the classroom:

1.) Letter imprints – Know those letter magnets?  Press them into a ball of clay and you get amazing letter imprints which can be used for a letter recognition center.

2.) Counting balls – How many small balls can you make?  Can you count them?  Can you put them into groups of 10 so we can count by tens?

3.) Letter formation- Roll the playdough into the shape of alphabet letters, or numbers.  Or give students a coloring sheet in a page protector and see if they can fill in the letter.  Students can also practice writing words or their name.

4.) Shadow sculptures – Create a sculpture.  Place it on a sheet of white paper.  Shine a flashlight onto the sculpture.  Use a pencil to draw around the outside of the shadow.

5.) Create collaborative sculptures – Working together can be one of the most important skills we teach.  Give students a topic or a shape and ask them to create that together.

6.) Sculpt beginning, middle and end of a story – After reading or listening to a story, ask students to create a sculpture of the beginning, the middle and the end of the story.

7.) Have playdough olympics – Perfect for indoor recess.  Have students try to roll playdough balls into small containers or having stacking contests with small balls of playdough.  Have a committee create medals out of playdough.

8.) Measuring snakes – Have students create snakes of different lengths and practice using a ruler to measure how long each snake is.

9.) Work on forces – There’s nothing easier to push and pull than playdough.  Work on pushing and pulling with your hands and other items, blocks, marbles, strings, etc.

10.) Create maps – Work on landforms by creating mountains, rivers, lakes and plateaus onto a real or fake country.

11.) Create a scene from a book – After reading a story, have kids sculpt out what they have seen.  This helps them work on setting, as well as visualizing the plot.

12.) Three dimensional shapes – Get a real feel for the faces of three dimensional shapes by creating the faces with playdough.  This kinesthetic strategy will cement in the minds of students the properties of 3-d shapes.

13.) Imaginary play – Playdough can be turned into any variety of prop or costumes for imaginary play, from a superhero watch to a magic wand to the pizza we are going to eat for dinner.  The only limits are your students’ imaginations.

14.) Snakes & Donuts – This economics game allows students to explore trading, price, and supply and demand while creating snakes and donuts out of playdough.  Find the specifics of this game in this old blog post.

15.)Imprint fossils – Pressing leaves or bones into a piece of playdough is a great way to create a mock up of an imprint fossil. 

16.)  Create number sentences – Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division can all be practiced simply by making balls of playdough and labeling them correctly.

17.) Add fractions & mixed numbers – Work on fractions by having students practice creating “wholes” that are the same size and using plastic butter knives to cut the wholes into fractions.  This provides a clear visualization of what is going on when we add fractions.

18.) Visualizing fractions – Take those counting balls and create a fraction of a set or a fraction of a number easily.  Use different colors to make it pop out for students.

19.)  Create an animated video – Use an app like Stop Motion Studio, which allows students to use single frame pictures to create an animated videos.  They can use playdough to set the scene and take a picture every time something changes.  At the end, they put their pictures into the app and get a video of the movie.

20.) Create a sculpture of the main character before you begin to write your story.  - While creating the character, students should think about their character and what will happen to it in the story they write.

How do you use playdough in your classroom?

15 Ways to Use Sidewalk Chalk in Your Classroom

When it’s nice outside, I am always looking for excuses to take my class outside.  A great way to plan an outdoor lesson is to incorporate sidewalk chalk into your lesson.  Here are 15 ways to use sidewalk chalk in your classroom:

1.) Create Your Own Hundreds Chart:  Start students out with the first row of a hundred’s chart and then let students fill in the other numbers.  Once the chart is made, students can jump out number patterns and work on their addition, subtraction and multiplication facts.

2.)  Reading Buddy Squares: Draw squares on the ground, put 2 books in each square.  Have students pair off and read the two books in their box with their partner – back to back or shoulder to shoulder.  When students have finished the books in one box, they can switch to another box.

3.)  Practice Spelling Words:  Chalk can be another great way for students to work on spelling and sight words.  Have them draw their words big enough to walk on them and they can practice their words two ways!

4.)  Vocabulary Hopscotch:  Have your students review their vocabulary with vocabulary hopscotch.  Draw out a standard hopscotch map.  Write a different vocabulary word in each square.  If students land on a word, they have to give the definition of the word in order to stay in the game.

5.)  Drawing Maps:  Students could create maps of their own, or practice sketching out world maps.  At my school, we created a world map with chalk.  Everyone helped color in oceans and label the continents.  Then we used string to add the Equator and Prime Meridian. 

6.)  Make and Jump on Number Lines:  So many math concepts can be covered with number lines – adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, decimals, negative numbers etc.  Draw out a number line – have students add whatever numbers fit on the number line.  Then, have students work on equations by actually jumping on the number line.

7.) Jotting Down Unfamiliar Words: Take Sustained Silent Reading outside and give each student a piece of chalk.  Tell them that if they come to a word they don’t know the meaning of, they should jot it down on the sidewalk near them.  At the end of 15 – 20 minutes, write down all of the students’ words on a piece of paper.  Have students look up the words in the dictionary to begin the creation of a “New Words Notebook”. 

8.) Draw Geometrical Figures & Properties:  Give students a specific geometry concept to work on – every student could even work on their own topic (from a random grab bag or differentiation by design).  Have students use the sidewalk chalk to draw out their concept.  This works from simple shapes for younger students to acute angles, parallel lines, line segments, radius and diameter, etc. for older students.

9.)  Draw Science Diagrams: Cell diagrams, genetics charts, human body diagrams – anything you can draw on paper can be drawn outside with sidewalk chalk, giving a new, kinesthetic experience to increase memory of the concepts.

10.)  Drawing and Walking Out Timelines:  Give students a real understanding of the amount of time that passed between important events by drawing out your own timelines.  Use one student foot for a set amount of time (10 years, 100 years, 1000 years).  Then add important events from your history lessons.  Finally have students walk “through history” from one event to another.  Great way to point out common misconceptions – like Martin Luther King Jr. being alive during slavery.

11.)  Coordinate Graphing: Sidewalk chalk is a great way to create a coordinate grid that is large enough to walk on.  Students can become the “points” and determine their own coordinate.  Also great for working on reflecting and translating points.

12.) Draw your Character or Setting:  Have students brainstorm ideas for their next story by having them draw out their character or setting outside with sidewalk chalk.  Then take a picture of their drawing and have them keep it handy while they are writing their story.

13.)  Create and Describe a Potion:  Have students create a “potion” by mixing together kitchen ingredients.  Then, have students use sidewalk chalk to write descriptive words (adjectives) and sentences about their potion.

14.)  To the Races!:  Have students race paper airplanes, cars, balls, marbles, anything that rolls or flies.  Students should use sidewalk chalk to mark where each item ends.  Students can then measure the distance traveled by each item.  Great for allowing students to design their own vehicles!

15.) Create a Student Graph:  Have students create the categories for a survey.  Then, create a “Student Pictograph”, using sidewalk chalk as the axis and students as the “symbols”.

 

How do you use sidewalk chalk in your classroom?

 

 

Lessons Learned in Ireland

My family and I have been back from our wonderful winter vacation in Ireland for almost a week now and we’re busily trying to get back into “real life”.  My husband and I rented a house in Ireland.  We took our three sons (age 8, 5 and 1 1/2) and my grandmother traveled from the US to meet us there.  It was a wonderful time and a great way to expose to yet another different culture and different ways of doing things.  It was also a way to experience the “Christmas feeling” that we miss by living in Morocco, a country where most people do not celebrate Christmas.  Here are some of the things my family learned/experienced during our trip:

1.) British/Irish English – Many of our fellow expats here in Morocco are from England or Ireland, so we are used to this dialect, but being surrounded by this daily for 2 weeks gave me a better understanding of where the differences between British English and American English lie.  It was fun to see signs that said “Take Away” instead of “Takeout” and “To Let” instead of “For Rent”, and to hear 8:30 described as “half 8”.  As I am teaching a UK curriculum this year, this reminder of the vocabulary differences was very important for me and I am trying to be sure to include both sets of vocabulary when I am working with my students.

2.)  Short Days – To truly understand the concept of how short a day is in the northern climates, you must truly be there.  Since we were in Ireland during the winter, the sun didn’t come up until 9:30 a.m. and it was completely down by 4:45 p.m.  The lack of sunlight has an effect on you, but I would love to go back in the summer when I was told that the sun comes up by 5 a.m. and doesn’t go down until almost 11 p.m.

3.)  Driving on the Left Side of the Road – Not only the driving, but also realizing that the side we drive on is also the side we walk on and the side we of the stairs we go up.  I often found myself walking on the wrong side, especially when going up the stairs.   

4.)  History is amazingly interesting!  I love exploring old buildings and cemeteries and Ireland was great for this. We explored castles, churches, cemeteries and even New Grange, a tomb that older than the pyramids!  Here are some pictures of what we saw:

    

    

           

The money I earned from selling teaching resources on Teachers Pay Teachers helped us to afford this amazing trip.  If you are interested in creating a Teachers Pay Teachers store for yourself – click HERE for more details.

 

Discover the Butterflies

This area looks like just another passageway.  Through that blue door is the business office of the International School of Morocco.  However, the area with the grass, leaves and trees is a sanctuary of real, every day, child centered learning.  Every morning and afternoon recess, there is a gaggle of students in this area, feeding the rabbits and tortoises, watering the plants, and most recently watching the caterpillars.  There is milkweed planted at the far end, near the blue door, and it is literally covered with caterpillars.  There are about 30 – 40 caterpillars eating every leaf they can get to.  The plants aren’t so pretty these days, as they have been stripped of their leaves!  Now, we are seeing chrysalises forming everywhere.  The 3 year old class literally stood and watched a caterpillar shed his skin and become a chrysalis.  Each day the kids sit and watch the caterpillars, watch the chrysalises, watch the butterflies and learn first hand about life cycles, respecting animals, observing nature, etc.  We don’t actually teach these skills until our life cycle unit at the end of the year, but the kids have learned during recess, this “down time”, “non-teaching time”, this time that many teachers, parents, and school officials feel is “wasted” than we could teach them in months and months of intense teaching.  Recess is definitely not “wasted” at my school!
A few of the chrysalises have been “rescued” from falling off of dead leaves and are now residing in our classrooms, where students can watch even more intently as the chrysalises become butterflies.  Once the butterfly comes out of the chrysalis, we will bring them out to this garden, release them, and hope they come back to plan more eggs so that the students have this joyful real life learning every year.
What do your student “discover” at recess?