We started out with the EPIC story of Samurai Santa: A Very Ninja Christmas by Rubin Pingk. The kids loved the story of the little ninja boy who wanted to chase Santa away. He felt that Santa was ruining his fun. None of his ninja friends wanted to have a snowball fight because they wanted to stay on Santa's nice list. Little did he know, Santa loves a good snowball fight as well.
Once we finished the book we talked about what an epic snowball fight would consist of and how we would protect ourselves with a fort if we were involved in such a snowball fight. The students were then given the challenge of creating a fort from boxes to protect their teacher from a snowball that would be launched by students from another class. They loved working together to decide how to protect their teacher.
Students were then given a large ace bandage (with elastic) and a few plush snowballs. They had to problem solve to decide how to launch the snowball into the fort. Many of them made a connection to the game of Angry Birds. We practiced using vocabulary words like pull, push, force, heavy, light, motion and energy.
Needless to say, the kids and teachers had a blast. I think that Ninja Day was one of our favorites!
How fun! You have the best ideas.
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