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Nocturnal Animal Acitvity Idea for Math and Literacy

Happy Saturday Everyone! Each year when we study Nocturnal Animals we end our unit with a "Day in the Dark:" where we dim the lights, play with flashlights and have all around learning fun in the dark. I wrote a post about this last year introducing my Nocturnal Animals Unit on Tpt and introducing everyone to my favorite activity, read the room with flashlights. Well this year on top of all the activities I did last year I added a new one. Since a few of our nocturnal animals like to rummage through the trash (raccoon, skunk, possum, rat etc.) we played "Trashcan Reading" here is what we did: I had forgetten my phone yesterday so the pictures are from home instead of the classroom :( I had this bucket of "trash" sitting out in the classroom, the kids asked me what it was and I told them it was my trash from working the day before. They we very curious about this trash bucket that was just sitting by my chair with all of this colored paper inside. While they were out of the classroom I spread the trash around the room, when they returned I told them that nocturnal animals had made a huge mess in our room and we needed to clean it up and bring the trash to the carpet. They were so giddy, there was screaming and giggling and talk about what animal had made this mess, it was crazy fun! Once they had collected all of the trash and were sitting on the carpet we went around the circle and if they could read me what was on the "trash" they could put it back in the trash can. If they couldn't I would either help them or have them wait till their next turn depending on their abilities. On each sheet of paper I wrote a CVC word, a nonsense CVC word, names of my students, CVC names of children not in our room and numbers with their respective word. Each child would read what was on the card ant tell me if it was a name, number, object or nonsense word. This activity was sooooo much fun, the kids did a great job reading and the variety of what I included in the "trash" allowed everyone to be successful, even those that are not reading yet could identify numbers and names. If you get a chance to try this activity let me know how it went or if you tweaked it in anyway to meet the needs of your students. Till next time, Christine

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