Thursday Therapy: Rainy Days and Wednesdays

I bought stuff at the TpT sale. Stuff I want to try. Stuff I can't print out at school because the color ink cartridge is out. Stuff I forget to print at home. So I improvised this week.

My 3rd-5th graders played Pick Your Points. It's a game I picked up at TSHA several years ago. It is my go-to when there are crazy weeks, and this one had a lot of ARDs, retesting, and a couple of field trips.

K-2 played an open-ended Pizza Game. It is such a cute game. Students build a pizza with foam cutouts. Most really love arranging their pieces into silly faces. The die has colors instead of numbers. I can't find the company anymore, but I have the Cheeseburger, Hot Dog and Picnic games, and I really wish they were still in business.

On Wednesday, it rained, and I got to pull out a old favorite. I got it from a book that I don't remember and don't have anymore. I don't even know the name, but it's perfect for rainy days. Basically, we play with water. We've been in a drought so long that my food colors were crusted shut!

Here are the supplies:

Cups (clear works better), spoons, wax paper, straws, and food color.

Directions:
* Mix food color into water
* Give each student a sheet of wax paper
* Use straws to plop colorful rain onto wax paper
* Move around and make patterns and different colors

Here is a plop:

The wax paper allows the water to blob up.

Use the straw to make beads:

This is a great activity for cause and effect, following directions, requesting, and using language to describe the different colors and patterns. Most students figure out very quickly that they can combine different blobs to make new colors.

It's just water and food dye, so if a student drinks it, it's non toxic. I'm guessing. Not that it happened to me...

It's also a great lesson in understanding directions for cleaning up!

The activity only lasts about 10 minutes before the water soaks through the wax paper. For the rest of the time, depending on the group, I used a David Shannon book called The Rain Came Down, another book called The Rainstomper, or an app/Stella Story called Rainy Days. They were all popular.

What have you been doing?