Brainstorm popular expressions with friends and family, then explore their meanings through game play and writing/drawing/cut-and-paste activities.
Unveiling Idioms: A Game of Concentration
Follow the Word Trail: Organize a Treasure Hunt
Create a treasure hunt out of word-puzzle clues hidden around the home or yard.
Send a Smile: Make a Card for a Special Occasion
Everyone loves getting a greeting card, especially if it's homemade. Make a funny or thoughtful greeting card or invitation with pictures and a poem, joke, or riddle.
The Natural World as Inspiration: An Outdoor Art Show
Children incorporate materials from outdoors with paints or crayons to create pieces of art to display on their clotheslines, fences, or porches for a neighborhood art show.
A Trip to the Museum: From Picture to Story
Visit a museum or art gallery (either online or in person) with children and teens, helping them find inspiration for a story based on a piece of art that they particularly enjoy or relate to.
Finding Poetry in Pleasure Reading
After reading a book or magazine, children and teens can choose a section and transform it into what's known as a "found poem."
Write Letters to Friends and Family
Invite young adults to write letters to classmates, postcards from travels, and e-mails to family and friends.
Have You Seen the Movie Yet?
Before seeing a film based on a book, classic or contemporary, children can learn about filmmaking and create their own scenes based on their favorite moments from the book.
Design a Travel Brochure
Invite children and teens to create a travel brochure to share information about a special place with others.
What's in This? Investigating Nutrition Information
Encourage children and teens to make healthful food choices by having them explore the foods they eat and the ways those foods are advertised.
Creating Comics and Cartoons!
Using published comics and cartoons as examples, children can create their own while playing with images and language.
Mail Time!
Sort through your junk mail and talk about what you find for a fun literacy activity before recycling it!
Creating Family Timelines
Children can interview family members and make an illustrated timeline of the most important family events and memories.
Exploring the Library
Plan a visit to a library to discover more about this magical place.
Let's Play a Game
Playing board games or card games can be a fun activity, so why not make your own?
Fairy Tales and You
Children will draw on their knowledge of story structure and fairy tales to write their own.
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein was published in 1974.
Students are introduced to a Silverstein verse and asked for their impressions. They then draw that they imagine when they read one of his lines and then write a line or two to continue the passage.
Today is the International Day of Peace.
Students brainstorm a list of current conflicts and why people fight. Groups discuss and present possible solutions and create posters that promote their particular solution.
Get ready to celebrate Banned Books Week!
Students brainstorm reasons why certain books might have been banned and discuss common reasons why books are challenged.
Mickey Mouse appeared in his first animated feature.
Students create a short, humorous story with at least one action character, and then use online tools to make a flipbook.