Today was nothing short of fun for my first graders, it was Bubble Day!!! For Bubble Day we focus on all things bubbles such as blowing bubbles, bubble gum, and speech bubbles.
Bubble Day Reading Activities
We begin our day learning about blowing bubbles. We gather our schema and read a book called Pop! A Book about Bubbles by Kimberly Bradley. We do an anticipation guide together to guess true or false before reading and then gather our answers after learning. We also write facts we learned about bubbles and create a question we still have about bubbles.
I also love to read “The Bubble Factory” by Tomie DePoala. This book is out of print, but I did find several read-aloud versions on YouTube. This is a cute fiction story that I use to work on comprehension. It is super fun to have the children come up with their own bubble potion list of ingredients too.
Bubble Day Contest
In the morning we complete two contests. We have a bubble gum blowing contest and a bubble gum blowing contest. I know not all children can blow bubbles, so I have whichever students want to participate come up front. Warning…both contests get them a tad excited. One year my niece won the contest as pictured here. After blowing bubbles with bubble gum, we write about how to blow a bubble and make these cute crafts using pink pom poms.
Bubble Day Centers
Then we move on to centers. We do centers for the hour before lunch and an hour after lunch. The math centers review odd and even numbers, place value, time to the half-hour, money, and skip counting by 2’s. There are a few no-prep games to play too.
For phonics and grammar, we review digraphs, long and short vowels, synonyms, nouns adjectives, and verbs.
For writing, I have a center with speech bubble stories and blank mini-book templates. Mo Willems Pigge and Elephant books are perfect for this. If you have a Reading A-Z membership, there are speech bubble stories on there as well. Children can read the books and create their own speech bubble books. They really enjoy this center.
More Bubble Day Fun
We end the day by reading a mini book on how to make bubbles. We make a big batch together that we take outside. Over the years I have collected several big bubble wands to use with our group bubbles. I also ask for donations of individual bubbles. These would be cute as a souvenir for bubble day too.
While we are outside with our bubbles, we collect data for our bubble experiment. This is the best way to end our bubble day.
Another fun activity you can do is make a bubble gum machine and fill it with fun memories from the school year. This end of the year craft makes a cute bulletin board display if you do Bubble Day early enough.
I also have Bubble Day Digital Version with Google Slides and activities that you can project onto your board and share with students.
Here is what a few teachers had to say about Bubble Day:
“This is my favorite theme day resource. It has so many engaging activities to create memorable learning experience for students.”“So much fun to be had with your students with these bubble day activities. Doesn’t need to just be at the end of the year. Can be any day/week you want to be themed. Students ABSOLUTELY loved it!”“My students absolutely loved this resource! It was hands-on and engaging. It kept the kids happily working and helped to minimize any end-of-the-year behavior issues. 10 out of 10 would recommend.”“SO many great activities for this special day! Even if you do not celebrate bubble day, it has great themed activities for a multitude of concepts. The games are very cute and engaging for the students. This resource is great to use as a celebration for end of year activities/rewards/days.”
Bubble Day is part of my End of the Year Theme Days Mega Bundle for celebrating the last week of school with fun learning activities.
Read more about theme day activities for the last week of school right here on my blog:
