BubbleGum Ideas --Chewing and Learning

So we do Accelerated Reader at our elementary school.  We have school point goals each quarter.  The 1st graders work hard to do their part, but with their books only worth .5 per book...it's really a small part.  I create my own goal chart in my room with flowers that work their way up the vine -- to go along with the progress flower on the computer program.  The kids love it, I love the simple way of keeping track of their goals...it's a win-win.

But the school rewards are kind of odd sometimes.  This quarter the school reached the school-wide goal and so they get to chew bubblegum!  The principal delivers it to our rooms....the kids love it, but I want it to be a bit more fun and meaningful or rather memorable!

This year I decided to turn the bubblegum into a mini theme for the day.  Here are a few ideas and things I found to do that day.

Here is a fun math bump game with the bubblegum theme. I found it on TpT:

Here's the writing project I'm going to do....How to Blow A Bubble: 

Then of course I had to get this Opinion Writing Activity too....Should Bubblegum Be Allowed in School?  There is no such thing as too much writing...right?

This next one on TpT has a combination of math, science and art.   It's a clever approach to bubblegum chewing..

My 1st graders are going to have fun while they are learning on bubblegum reward day this year!  It might just make it fun for me too!  If you don't have a bubblegum reward day at your school...maybe these are good reasons to give it a chew and ponder it.

Day 50 The Schroeder Page

Monica teaches 2nd grade and posts her teaching ideas and adventures on The Schroeder Page.  She has a lively blog...full of ideas and activities...lots of videos and pictures.  

Yesterday her post about dental hygiene has me wanting to teach about teeth in my class too...wish I had a school nurse who wanted to do fun stuff like her school nurse!  Hmmm...homemade toothpaste?  That sounds like lots of fun for the students!  

This year we adopted a new science curriculum...the National Geographic one.  It looks like it has great reading material and ideas for experiments, but our district didn't purchase the lab kits...so to do the units we have to buy it all ourselves!  I'm not sure how to describe how I feel about that. :(

But science is one of my favorite things to teach and my goal for next school year...after being in my new school for a year...is to see how I can work it in to my lesson plans.  In the meantime I file away cool ideas that I find.  And Monica had the coolest science activity for Valentine's Day.

I love the scientific method.  All the built in questions and the potential for problem solving and writing are huge!  So when I saw this activity...it made me crave to teach some meaningful science again!  Monica even includes the directions for how to make the goggles.  Yes, the kids MAKE the goggles they wear!  How cool is that!?