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NASCAR

Boogety! Boogety! Boogety!
Let's Go Racing!

What a fun unit!!! :) One person's request at TA
turned into a race fest! So climb into the
passenger's seat, strap on your helmet and LET'S GO
RACING!!!!!! :)
First let's brainstorm some of the things that might
be useful in creating this unit:
pit crew
pit box
caution
checkered flag
caution flag (yellow)
yellow flag
green flag
Boogety, Boogety, Boogety (DW always says this at the
start of the race)
DW = Daryl Waltrip
lap
mile
garage
8, 24, 99, 6, 12 (car numbers)
finish line
pace car
race time
stall
out of gas
cut a tire
wreck
in traffic
partner
crew chief
driver
sponsor
points (system for overall winner)
winner
2nd
3rd
4th
tires (they start off with 12 sets, I think.
They cost $1500 a set!)
fuel
milage
spotter (tells when to change lanes)
helmet
fireproof suit
gloves
steering wheel (is removable)
"We want to race the truck!" (UPS)

Use car numbers to teach even, odd. You could
give students cars with the numbers and have them sort
them into even and odd stacks. Or take the two
checkered finishing flags and label one with even and
one with odd and have them sort the cars onto the
correct flag.

Use a car number line on a race track around the room
to record number of days of the year (100 will be at
the finish line with checkered flag or either the last
day of school if you don't do 100 Days of School)

Use race time and race days to teach time and calendar
(most races are on Sunday). So you can sequence days
from one race day to the next.

Sequencing numbers - have cars with numbers for
students to sequence .. they can line them up at the
starting line.

Behavior - you could give each their own race car and
set them up to move forward a certain distance each
day for excellent behavior, graduated on down to not
moving at all for poor behavior. At the end of the
week, or the day, see who "wins" by seeing who's at
the finish line.

Hallway display for beginning of school: "Boogety!
Boogety! Boogety! Let's Go Racing Into Kindergarten!"
You can have a racetrack and each child have their own
car. They can decorate their car, add their own
number, and if you'd like, take their picture and glue
their face into the window as the driver. For a
Room List, have a lineup of all the drivers and their
appropriate race car number. (If you wanted to
have this all done ahead, you could supply the names,
numbers and cars and then after school starts let them
decorate them and add their picture.)

Your helper for the day could be your "Crew Chief"
and you're the "Driver."

Use winners/finishers to practice ordinals

Use top 10, top 20, etc. to practice counting groups
of 10 as an introduction to counting by 10s.

Use pairs of gloves and/or crossed checkered flags to
practice counting by 2s.

Turn the class into drivers with their own numbers.
Have them design their own car. Display these to use
with helping to teach the numbers and/or make a
class Big Book for them to practice independently.

Make a racing line up and/or Big Book with student
names and car numbers. Not only can they be used for
teaching numbers, but also for learning letters
through their friends' names.

Have a driver of the day and chant and cheer his
name and number for letter and number recognition.

Have a game where students match a car with a number,
to a helmet with a name, to aid in teaching number and
classmates' names. Have a racing lineup on hand
for students to use to help in matching.

Take digital photos of students and have them match
class mates' face with their name on a helmet or to a
car.

Use cars to create matching game for color words.
(red car to helmet with word "red")

Use cars with two tires missing. Students put two
tires with rhyming pictures on each car.

Tony Stewart is the rebel-rouser, so you'll want to
name Time Out the Tony Stewart Pit Box

Environmental Print Book: Tide, UPS, M&Ms,
McDonald's, etc. Use these slogans to make
environmental print Big Books.

"Vroom, Chugga, Vroom, Vroom" by Anne Miranda was a
big book about car racing that came with our Houghton Mifflin Kdg.
Reading series.
Twelve
Little Race Cars - Scott Pruitt (counting book)

Reading Challenge: Cover a bulletin board in black and
white checkered fabric and a race track or path.
Assign each student a car with a number and let them
progress towards the finish line as they complete
their assigned reading goals.
Reading and NASCAR Rocks!!

Art:
Put a sheet of gray paper in a shirt box, add a
little bit of black paint "oil" to it and then put in
one or two toy cars and let the student roll them
through the oil to create a "spin out" design.
Or you can have them just shift the box back and forth and see what kind of
design you get without having them actually touch the
cars.
You could also have them create a story to go with it.

Winner's Circle (the playground)
Pit Stops could be bathroom breaks, etc.
Fuel up at the cafeteria

You can use the drivers' names and let the kids count
the letters in their name to match to a helmet/car/card etc with the number.

Use NASCAR graphics or stickers to create NASCAR
Bingo! You can download Barb's NASCAR
Environmental Print Bingo below. (PDF format)
Thanks for sharing, Barb! :)

Your "Pit Crew" can be your helpers for the week.

From Oriental Trading:
www.orientaltrading.com Type in race car in
the search box. Make sure you click "show all
results" are something similar. (These ideas
were also contributed by Barb.)
Race Car Bean Bag
Toss: You could keep the numbers as is and get
addition practice adding up the points or change them
to match
skills you're working on.
Race Car Party Loot Bags: Use as welcome to school
bags for teachers
who give out a little something at Orientation or if
you give a treat
bag when a child has a birthday in your class.
Gummy Race Car Treat Bags: For sorting and graphing
activities. I
can make a simple graph worksheet to use with these;
sorting page too. (ooops! sorting mat is below
with another activity .... scroll down. ;) )
printable graph for Gummy Race Cars in PDF format
*thanks Barb for contributing so much to our page!! :)

Race Car Emergent Reader: Barb also mentioned that
Oriental Trading had "Make
a race car stickers." Another barb online came
up with the idea of creating emergent readers with
these kinds of stickers. The pages for this book
would go something like this, depending on the
stickers you get.
Let's Build a Race
Car!
pg 1) I will need
a car body. (students stick the car body on this
page)
pg
2) I will need two wheels. (students stick two
wheels on this page)
pg
3) I will need some tailpipes.
pg
4) I will need some flames!
pg
5) What a cool race car! (this last page has the
whole car put together, so they'll need two sets of
everything)
If
this is cost prohibitive, you might want to create
just one or two books on cardstock and have them
laminated and add them to your Reading Station after
the students are very familiar with the text.
For shared reading you can either create a Big Book or
put the sentences on sentence strips to use in the
pocketchart. You can use a set of the stickers
to make matching picture cards for each sentence.
The sentence strips and pictures cards can be used for
sequencing and matching pictures to text.

Check out the
teacher stores locally and online for NASCAR/racing
bulletin board sets, trims, die-cuts, etc. Also,
check out the party sections at Walmart, Hobby Lobby,
or similar stores, for stickers, table cloths (
bulletin board covers), favors for game pieces,
balloons, etc.

Buy or make at least one checkered flag to use as a
pointer. You could also have the green flag and
the yellow caution flag.

Addition Card Game: Make a deck of cards with a car
icon on each (make sure the car number is easily
read). Print on cardstock and laminate.
Shuffle the deck and place it face down. Each
student playing takes turns in picking up the top two
cards off the deck. Using a sheet of paper, they
add the two numbers on the cards. Whoever has
the largest answer wins that round. Play until
all cards are gone.

Subtraction Card Game: Use the same cards from above,
but have them subtract the smaller number from the
larger number. In this game, whoever has the
smallest number wins the round.

Graphing: Who's your favorite driver? Provide
each student a boy cut out and let them decorate it
like their favorite driver. Then let them graph
their favorite on a large class graph creating a
pictograph. Afterwards, you may want them to
transfer the results to a student graph, creating a
bar graph ... or use smiley faces to create another
pictograph.

Check your local Dollar Tree for NASCAR children's
books.

Color Sort: Print the Bingo cards above and this color
sorting mat. Students can sort the cars into the
correct color stack on the mat. Another
contribution from ... Barb! Thanks! :)
printable color sorting mat (pdf format)

The following contributions were made by Jeanie aka A
Diehard Harvick Fan! :)
If
you purchase the packages of Racing Trading cards
(like baseball trading cards) you can send them to the
drivers and MOST will autograph the cards and return
them if you send a SASE.
Having students
write a letter to the drivers is a great Language Arts
project. I know several of the drivers will also
send "hero" cards when they are requested. Just be
aware, the racing season runs from February to
November and there is little time for the drivers to
be at home between races so if you want something
autographed, send it at the first of the
school year and explain to the kids it will be
exciting "if" it gets returned that year. I have
heard stories of the more popular drivers (Dale Jr,
Jeff Gordon, Jimmy Johnson, etc) who are over a year
or two behind in signing and returning items that have
been sent to them for
autographs.
For some of the older students, it would be fun to
follow the racing circuit on a map of the United
States. There is a lot of math that can be done. How
many miles between races? How many miles total for
the season?
To better educate
yourself with the drivers and appropriate sponsors,
there is a book that came out in February (comes out
every year at the start of the season) that might be
helpful. It is the 2005 Press Guide. This book is
basically an oversized magazine that gives statistics
on drivers, tracks, cars, etc. I usually get mine at
WalMart and they run about $10 but are full of
information, especially for racing rookies. I have
also seen them at Barnes & Nobles as well as
Hastings.
Also for the older students, each track is a different
configuration and different length. Let's say a track
is a mile and a half, and the race is a 600 mile race;
how many laps do the drivers have to drive to finish
the race? I am sure you get the picture.
Another idea for the older students is to check the
driver's points. Each driver receives so many points
for items such as 5 points for leading a race, 5
points for leading the most laps, etc. The points
schedule for NASCAR can be found on Nascar.com. If
each student in class were to draw for drivers or be
assigned individual drivers, Monday morning math
journals could be checking to see how many points
their driver acquired over the weekend. At the end of
the season, the driver with the most points wins the
Nextel Cup Championship. Simple basic math but kinda
fun to watch.
This link explains the points system for NASCAR.
http://www.nascar.com/2004/news/headlines/official/09/19/points_chart/index.html
If a teacher
likes, there are also several fantasy racing sites
that students can make estimates as to which driver
they would want on their team and where those drivers
will finish in the race on a weekly basis. Could be a
fun thing as a whole class to have their own racing
team competition.
Thanks so much Jeanie for sharing your ideas and your
knowledge! :)

Racing Shapes (printable)
http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/class/pdfs/2005F/050902_bp7.pdf
NASCAR.com
http://www.nascar.com
List of drivers, car numbers, and their sponsors
http://www.nascar.com/drivers/list/cup/dps/
Jeff Gordon Racing School
http://www.jeffgordonracingschool.com/default.shtm
Lowes Motor Speedway
http://www.lowesmotorspeedway.com/
Harvick OnLine ("Young Guns" section)
http://www.kevinharvick.com/kids.htm
Thanks to all the TA members who helped put this page
in motion! :)
Boogety! Boogety! Boogety!

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