After testing is done, it truly starts to feel like summer is around the corner! The last few weeks of school are the perfect time to dive into themed projects and units. And nothing says summer more than lemonade! I’m sharing some ideas for lemonade-themed activities you can do with your upper elementary students that are fun and standards-based!
Try a Lemonade Stand PBL
A lemonade stand-themed PBL (project-based learning) is a perfect way to celebrate summer in the classroom! It’s great for small group work and it brings together lots of subject areas and skills at the same time.
Students can work together to design a lemonade stand (on paper, unless you really go all in). That means coming up with the stand design, researching where to buy supplies, testing recipes, creating menus, choosing prices, designing advertising, and more. How fun is that?!
Make Lemonade
Another fun, slightly messy, activity is to make lemonade, of course! That’s an easy way to review liquid volume/capacity, units of measurement, fractions, and ratios. And it’s a good math challenge to have them double or triple the recipe.
For an extension, they can experiment with different ingredients (like sugar substitutes or limes instead of lemons). Then, they can survey taste testers and use the data to create and analyze graphs.
On top of the math, they’ll get practice reading functional text and following directions. And you can review science concepts like mixtures vs. solutions, states of matter, and even sink vs. float.
Complete Digital Lemonade-themed Activities
If you want to stay mess-free, digital lemonade-themed activities are the way to go!
This no-prep set of interactive activities is an easy way to engage students as summer approaches. And it helps them review math, reading, writing, word analysis strategies, and science all at the same time!
Students can complete the activities right in Google Slides™! This is definitely a must-have when you want interactive digital activities that don’t take up too much time.
Read Books
We can’t talk about doing a themed unit without including lemonade-related books! Here are a few that my students have enjoyed reading.
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The Lemonade War is a fun chapter book about a brother and sister who have competing lemonade stands. (And if your students love it, there are 4 more in the series). Summarizing details, inferring character traits, and making predictions are just a few skills you can hit with this read-aloud.
It Began with Lemonade is another cute book. It’s really for younger audiences but older kids will also enjoy it. You can use this one to review plot, conflict/resolution, and figurative language.
Write about Lemonade
As part of a lemonade-themed unit, you’ll definitely want to review sensory language and descriptive writing. To practice these skills, students can write paragraphs or poetry about lemons, lemonade, citrus fruit, you name it. You can also ask them to create media messages to inform or persuade an audience about something lemonade-related.
It can be tricky to know what to do with your students once standardized testing is done. Planning lessons around summer themes like lemonade helps engage students right up to the last day of school. And it’s great for summer school units, too. Let me know in the comments what other fun lemonade activities you love doing with 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders!
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