Beach Day

As the school year was coming to an end, my kindergarteners and I were anticipating a fun field trip day at the pool.  My school traditionally ends the year with a school-wide swimming field trip for the students and families.  The students always get very excited about it, but this year the weather didn't play along.  Due to rainy days and cold weather, our swimming trip was cancelled.  When I realized this fun day was not going to be happening, I decided it was time for "Plan B"... BEACH DAY! With only a little bit of brainstorming, my coworkers and I were able to think up a fairly sizable list of Beach Day activities.  The list was long enough that we didn't even have time to get through it all!  We tried to consider math and literacy activities, crafts, snacks, ideas to get the kids active, and down-time activities.

Here is what we came up with (followed by photographic evidence of how super fun our day was):

1.  "Sand castle" building contest using small paper cups instead of sand.  The kids worked in teams of 3 or 4.  They had some time to experiment with building and then decide on a final design.  We didn't actually choose one winner, but we toured the room and commented on what we liked about each "sand castle".

2.  Homemade leis.  Draw some flowers.  Cut out the flowers.  Cut a straw into smaller bits.  String flowers and straw bits on a piece of yarn...flower, straw, flower, straw...a pattern!

3.  Beach snack.  I gave each student a graham cracker in a baggie.  They pounded it into tiny crumbs to create "sand" for their beach.  This was the first ingredient put into the cup.  Then I gave each student a few scoops of vanilla yogurt that had been colored with blue food coloring to represent the ocean water.  On top of that they got a squirt of whip cream to show the waves on the ocean.  Finally, the students got a sour, gummy octopus to put in their oceans.  Yum!

4.  Read the book "The Sandcastle Contest" by Robert Munsch.  Silly AND beachy. :)

5.  We used word wall words to play sandcastle BINGO, which was a printable from The Mailbox magazine.

6. We played "sharks and swimmers".  You probably know this game, but maybe not with this title.  Most of the class stands in a row on one side of the field.  They are the swimmers.  2-3 students stand in the middle, as the sharks.  When I shout "Go!"  The swimmers attempt to run to the opposite side of the field without getting tagged by a shark.  If a swimmer does get tagged by a shark he/she then becomes a shark and tries to tag other swimmers.  Swimmers run from one side to the other until everyone is a shark.  Then we play again!

7.  Limbo.  I think we all know about that.

8.  We didn't have time to watch a movie in the classroom, but if we had we would have watched Madagascar.  Can't get any 'beachier' than being stranded on an island.
 

 9.  We also had to play the part by wearing beach gear, such as flip flops, hats, sunglasses, Hawaiian shirts.  The kids also brought along beach supplies like, towels and beach balls.  We put our towels out on the floor and had a picnic lunch!

10.  Sadly we ran out of time for hula dancing and crab walk racing, but wouldn't that have been fun?

11.  I also had these beach kid coloring pages hidden in my file cabinet.  The kids decorated them according to what their swimsuit really looks like.  (I'm not sure where I got these from, but they look like Carson Dellosa.  In the past we have decorated the swimsuits and then played a game with them.  We would mix up the swimmer people, hold them up one at a time and see if we could guess which student it was based on the swimsuit design.)

12.  I mentioned earlier that some students brought beach balls.  We used the beach balls to play a simple math game that we can call "Beach ball ten-partner toss".  Throughout the year we had been learning about number partners that equal ten, and we used those partners for our game.  We stood in a circle.  One student would say a number less than ten and then toss the ball to another student.  The student receiving the ball would have to answer with the correct number partner that would equal ten.  Then that student would say a new number less than ten and toss the ball to someone else.  This would continue until everyone got a turn!

13.  An activity that we've played in the past, but didn't have time for today was Fishing for word wall  words.  I have little paper fish, all with a word wall word written on them.  Each fish also has several staples init.  We used a fishing pole to catch the fish (the fishing pole is a pencil, with a length of string tied to it, with a magnet hooked to the end of the string).  If the students could read the words on the fish, they could keep them in their pile!

We had such a fun, beachy day!  I hope that your next Beach Day is also a success!