Watermelon Day

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Home : 2005 : May : 30

Watermelon Day
By ITeachFirst

My students and I enjoyed a day of Watermelon activities.
We started by listening to and singing Down By the Bay. Then we wrote our own verse using rhyming words. Have you ever seen a _____, _____ing a ________?
We put our poem inside a decorated paper plate that looked like a slice of watermelon with a bite out of it. We then sang again stopping to let someone sing in their rhyme. (Yes, 17 times!)
After looking at a watermelon we estimated the circumference by each child pulling off the amount of yarn they thought would go around it.
Then we tried each yarn and classified them as

too long, too short or the correct length.

We estimated the weight and each wrote their guess in pounds. Then we weighed the watermelon.

I found on the Watermelon.org website a picture of Piglet eating watermelon and drew in a word bubble. The students had a good time writing in what Piglet was saying and coloring him. I took time to let them read aloud to the class what their Piglet had said.

They predicted if they thought a watermelon would float or sink. Of course since they knew our watermelon weighed 15 pounds the guessed it would sink. Were they surprised when they say it float in the ice chest!

We made a graph to show who liked to eat watermelon and who did not.

We also read Watermelon stories, their favorite being The Berenstein bears and the Double Dare.

I gave out watermelon Jolly Ranchers through out the day for positive reinforsement during activities.

Then we ate watermelon! The Red and the Yellow kind. After, we had a seed spitting contest!

I gave them each to take home a watermelon bookmark that I found to printout that had a watermelon poem on it.

If you like the watermelon idea check out the website www.the#####.com and look under themes and units... Wild about Watermelon for more ideas and examples.

I had a great day, with NO discipline
problems from a usually difficult class. It was well worth the money and effort it took to go buy the watermelons and jolly ranchers!