5 Ways to Engage Your Students Using Stuffed Animals

Hello, It's Christina from Hanging Around In Primary.  I am happy to be guest blogging here at Who's Who and Who's New.  Today I want to share with you some great ways to engage students in the classroom with stuffed animals. Here are my top 5 ways to use stuffies in the classroom.

Classroom “Pet”

Meet Ellie – she is our classroom mascot and in the past she has visited my student’s homes on the weekends.  She traveled in a brightly colored bag and had a travel journal with her.  Each student would have a turn to take her for the weekend and then write about what adventures they had with her.  They loved having the chance to take Ellie home and it gave them an opportunity for some authentic writing at home.  I always took her home with me on Monday and gave her a bath just to be safe. 

Classroom Management  

When my students meet Ellie they learn that, although she has very small ears for an elephant, they are very sensitive.  She likes it best when everyone is working and using indoor voices.  She will often sit at the tables of students who are working well or sit on the laps of kids while listening to a story.  A hush falls over the room every time I remind them that Ellie is looking for somewhere to visit.  She really motivates my students to stay on task and try their best. 

Stuffed Animals are also a great way to make covering the curriculum more fun. These are some of the ways I use stuffies during my teaching time.  

        Reading Buddies!  

      Over the years I have collected beanie baby sized stuffed animals to use in my classroom.   I store them in my crate stools.  My students love to read to stuffed animals.  At the beginning of the year when we are building our stamina during Read to Self the students work towards reading with a stuffy.  Getting the opportunity to curl up with a stuffed animal on a carpet square is highly motivating. 

  

      Math Lessons

      I use my stuffed animals as manipulatives during math mini lessons are often as I can.  We have used them for sorting and patterning.  They are great for creating large concrete graphs at the carpet as well.  Stuffed animals can easily be used to show an addition/subtraction problem.  Using them makes math more playful and engaging for my students.  

       

      Guided Reading  

      I love to use my stuffed animals to help teach my students decoding strategies.  I have a Tryin’ Lion, Skippy the Frog, Stretchy Snake, Lips the Fish, Chunky Monkey and Flippy the Dolphin.  The only one I can’t find is an eagle for Eagle Eye - if you know where I can find an eagle stuffed animal I would love to hear about it.  When I teach each strategy I have the stuffy right at the table with us to reinforce the strategy.  I created a new poster set to use with my students while teaching these decoding strategies.  It includes posters to display with your stuffies, decoding wands as a visual reminder during the guided reading lesson and bookmarks that students can keep in their book boxes to refer to during independent reading.  If you are interested in checking it out you can find it by clicking {HERE}.   

I hope you have found these tips helpful and will start a collection of stuffed animals to use in your classroom.  If you already have stuffies perhaps you picked up a new idea here.  Thanks for stopping by!