Polar Express Day

Our school celebrates Polar Express Day.  We try to make the whole day about it, including the core subjects.  Here are some of my brainstorm ideas for this year:

Math:

This idea comes from a post from Little Miss Glamour Goes to Kindergarten.  I would adapt it for fourth grade by having students create repeating as well as growing geometric patterns with the confetti.  I love that she has them use paint brushes for the glue and keeps the different patterns separate in an art tray.  I found some cute snowflake confetti, winter foil confetti and poinsettia confetti for this purpose.  I also found a blank ornament coloring page for the outline.

The next graphing activity was inspired this post on Celebrate Second Grade blog.  She has them taste test different flavors of candy canes and then graph the results.  I found an assortment of mini candy canes here. 

I found a great candy cane graphing activity on TpT that has students using tally charts, frequency charts, bar graphs, and picto graphs.

Social Studies/Language Arts:
I found a great map skills activity called "See the World With Santa" on TpT.  It has students use a map, atlas, or globe to research cities by longitude and latitude that Santa would fly through.

Writing:
I have a winter poetry unit on TpT in which I have students write haikus and make snowflakes.  I found a better way to make the snowflakes out of coffee filters in this blog post.  I think I would still teach students how to write the winter haikus and try the coffee filter snowflakes.

We're supposed to do "step-by-step" writing in fourth grade, so I was happy to find this "How to Make Hot Chocolate" FREE activity on TpT from Third Grade Bookworm. 

Science:

I was inspired by this post by Teach Mama on experimenting with candy canes.  She had her kids test the canes in different liquids: Hot water, warm water, freezing water, and vinegar.

I would have them complete the Scientific Method foldable we've been using since the beginning of the year.

So with that, I'm at the end of my brainstorming!  Do you do any upper grades activities to celebrate Polar Express Day?  I'd love to hear what you do!