Red Ribbon Week

I have had a hard time finding Red Ribbon Week activities that are age appropriate for my kindergarteners. Here's what I have come up with so far.

• We have a life sized human body poster that we made and labeled during our human body/nutrition unit. I drew a cigarette on the mouth of the body and had the kids line up and take turns coloring the lungs black. We used a black crayon and made the lungs more and more black each time the body "smoked."



• (Monday)We made a large poster for our hallway that says "Smoking Is Bad" The kids all worked on it and I wrote negative things about smoking all around it. Halitosis (bad breath), black lungs, hard to breath, yellow teeth, bronchitis, worsens asthma, causes ear infections, hurts eyes, coughing, stains clothes and furniture, makes it hard to exercise, poor circulation.....



• (Tuesday)We are studying space, so I am talking about astronauts today. I plan to explain to the kids that astronauts have to keep their body in top condition, so drugs and alchohol are out of the question for them. I haven't found very many good coloring pages, so I made a few of my own. Today's page has an astronaut and it says "Astronauts Say No to Drugs".
• We are using hula hoops today to study Saturn. We will talk about the way that smoking makes it hard to do fun things like hula hooping
• Wednesday we dug for dinosaurs. We found the bones of a brachiasaurus in plaster. The color page that went along with this activity is "Dinosaurs Don't Dig Drugs" This week I have really emphasized saying yes to school! I have told the kids that they can be anything they want to be when they grow up, but they have to make good choices now. Palentologists and Astornauts have to go to college which means they have to study hard and never give up. This leads right into a discussion about choices, including what we put into our body. Say Yes to School; Say No to drugs!
• Thursday we studied rockets. I had a model rocket that we planned to shoot today, but the kit was missing some pieces. Some people have suggested using the diet coke and mentos rocket. If you have actually tried this one - let me know what you learned and how it worked. I have seen it on YouTube. The coloring page that went with this lesson says, "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that Drugs are Bad!"