RT3 Toolbox Activity Winners – Round 2

This week’s post was written by Tonii Lewis, an assistant project director at Best Practices.  Tune in next week for the third round of RT3 toolbox activity winners.

Happy Spring to everyone! The RT3 training season has finally come to an end, and a big thumbs up to ALL of the returning teachers and special needs educators that attended our training. You made it unforgettable with your active participation, purposeful discussions and engaging toolbox activity video and picture submissions.

The deadline for RT3 course work was on April 15^th. Kudos to ALL of you for your great work and efforts to complete your assignments! And sorry about the long wait… but BP finally had an opportunity to select more wonderful, unique toolbox submissions – and here a few…

Winner #1 – Elyse Loiacono
Card #15 – Step Aerobics
Give each child a hollow block to be used as a step and two cylinder blocks to be used as hand weights. Play some upbeat music and instruct the children on movements such as stepping up and down from the block and lifting hand weights in various ways. PDM5.4a

“We talked about how exercise is important to keep our bodies healthy. I asked the parents to dress their children up in 1980’s workout attire and we worked out to 80’s music. The children had a blast with this activity!”

Winner #2 – Julie Sewell
Card #120: Passport Travel
Have the children create a passport by folding a piece of construction paper into four squares. Decorate it with stamps, and have them write or dictate other countries or cultures they would like to visit. SS2.4c

“We updated our passports as we traveled to Malaysia. We have been following my daughter’s travels on The World Race this year and each month we travel and learn about a new country. They love to board the plane, watch the safety presentation video and then put the new stamp in their passport. At the beginning of the year, I would write the name of the country for each student. As the year progressed, students were given the opportunity to write the word themselves. Some are able to do it all by themselves while others still might need assistance.”

Winner #3 – Alexis Grant
Card #163: Farmers Market
Set up an outdoor farmers’ market with shopping carts, play fruit and vegetables, purses, bags, cash registers and play money. The children can act out the roles of cashier and customer in their outdoor market. CR4.4d

“I chose this activity because my children all enjoy dramatic real life experiences. Also, our playground is not very exciting and very limited. I appreciated the idea from the toolbox and the encouragement from the training to do the best we can to be creative and help our children have fun and explore outside. I also included a large book titled: My Family’s Market by Theresa Volpe. Children were able to sit and read it if they wanted to. They really enjoyed this! Thank you!”

Winner #4 – Michelle Nesbitt
Card #78: Ice Cream Letter Match
Create an alphabet matching game with tops and bottoms to ice cream cones. Cut brown triangle shapes for cones and pastel colored circles for the ice cream. Write upper case letters on the cones and lower case on the ice cream scoops. Have the children work in pairs to match all the upper and lower case letters. Starting with 10 or so letters makes the task more manageable. CLL7.4a

“The students had to match the upper case letters on the cones to the lower case letters on the ice cream. The students enjoyed matching the ice cream and cones. As an added challenge the students had to put the cones in ABC order, they also asked to do the activity during center time.”