It's-a-Me! Mrs. Peterson!

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Last week my 2nd grade classroom was transformed! In my first room flip of this school year, I decided to redo a favorite flip from last year...Mario World!  This originally stemmed from an idea we saw from our friends, Hope and Wade King, but I adapted it for me and my classroom!

The setup was SUPER (no pun intended) SIMPLE! We used blue and green plastic tablecloths from Dollar Tree, gold paper plates, and shipping boxes that we had saved.  You can see exactly how we hung the blue tablecloths in this video.
The kids had no idea this was happening and were simply told to wear red or green to school that day. Throughout the day, we incorporated all of our current curriculum goals and standards into some fun activities!  The activities were all hidden inside the coin boxes that were hanging or stacked around the room!
 
Inside the boxes, the kids found and completed the following games and activities.
1. Stomp The Goombas
Each student had a recording sheet with directions for finding words related to our current phonics unit.  For example, "Stomp a Goomba that has a suffix that compares two things!"

2. Super Noun Sort
Students worked in teams to sort Mario-themed words into categories of people, places, and things.

3. Adventures With Adjectives!
Students used recording sheets and used adjectives to describe different characters and places from the Mario video game world!

4. Fun with Facts and Opinions
Students sorted different Mario-themed sentences into categories of Fact or Opinion!  For example, "Princess Peach is pretty!" and "Mario's hat is red!"

5. Mario Math
Mario-themed word problems and dice addition games!

Besides these awesome activities, we also played some fun Mario-themed sight word games, did some brain break activities, and wrote letters to our favorite characters.  To end the day, we did some team challenges too!  We used "Warp Tunnels" (toilet paper tubes) to crate marble runs!  We also used "Yoshi Tongues and Eggs" (party blowers and white balloons) to do some relay races!

Add some fake mustaches, construction paper hats, and Mario-themed music, and our day was full of fun the kids won't soon forget!

You see, it's simply a matter of taking something I HAVE to teach, but teaching it in a way the kids WANT to learn!
                                                            - TRISHA


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