GLOW DAY!

This summer I was perusing pinterest and I came across a teaching blog that was all about setting the stage to engage children in learning.  One of things that they mentioned was to flip the classroom quarterly to keep kids excited about learning.  One of the ideas they had was to have a GLOW DAY.  As soon as I saw that, I knew it was something I wanted to try.  I submitted a Donor's Choose project and crossed my fingers that it got funded.  Through Donor's Choose I was able to get four black lights to hang around my classroom, some black light flashlights, and a few glowing items.  I then scoured my house, my classroom and Walmart for all things glowy.    I also asked parents to send in baking soda and vinegar for glow volcanoes.

In the morning we focused on Litercy.  We had 8 centers that each group rotated through.  One of the centers was sight words and fine motor combined.  They had to read the sight word and then place beads on the letters.

We took a break in the middle of Literacy centers to make GLOW VOLCANOES!  This was amazing.  The kids loved it.  It would not have been possible with out a parent volunteer.

I made a glow sensory bin that focused on reading and spelling simple decodable words.  They had to pull a word and then find the letters hidden in the rice to spell the word. 

We worked on strategy a little bit today too.  I was surprised that many kids did not know how to play tic-tac-toe so we learned how to play that as well.  

We also had a week and find sight word center using highlighters, and ABC order center using pipe cleaners and neon alphabet beads and roll and read using giant neon dice!

After lunch we took a quick group photo and then reset with a coloring activity using neon crayons and highlighters. 

After RtI we went back to work in glowing centers, this time doing math activities.  Some first graders came in to help for a while, so if you see an unfamiliar face, that is why!

One station had kids working on counting objects from 1 to 15. They pulled a card and then counted out the correct number of neon pom poms. 

We had a station where students made shapes out of neon yarn. 

We played a memory game to practice subitizing numbers zero to ten. 

We worked together to build a tower.  Each student took turns rolling a glow in the dark dice.  Whatever number they rolled, that is how many glow cups they got to add. 

We practiced numbers 9-20 by using glow play-doh and neon beads and ten frames. 

All in all we had a WONDERFUL day full of learning.   I heard "THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER" frequently throughout the day!

If you would like to check out my Donor's Choose page, you can click here.  You can subscribe to learn about future projects that need funding or you can donate towards a future project as well.