Capitalizing on the excitement of the recent Harker Family & Alumni Picnic, lower school teacher Shelby Guarino recently treated her grade 5 English classes to a unique interactive balloon activity which served as a fun way to practice grammar skills.

“The picnic is over, yet we are still playing!” said Guarino of the balloon game, held in the morning on Oct.19. “While it is hard to top the fun of throwing darts at balloons, we tried to keep the memories alive through the grammar balloon game.”

With the assistance of some “eager student helpers,” Guarino wrote various examples of different nouns and verbs on approximately 200 balloons which were leftover from the picnic game Dalmatian Darts. The students were then charged with the task of finding the correct parts of speech on the balloons and using them to formulate sentences on an accompanying paper test.

In order for Guarino’s students to complete the activity, they were required to meander through a pile of tiny balloons scattered across the classroom floor. They were steadfast in their mission to find and jot down examples of the five types of nouns and three types of verbs in about 25 minutes. When the last class of the day completed the test, they were rewarded with the job of popping all 200 balloons with a pushpin.

“It was a fun way to practice grammar, and a great way to remember our time together at the Harker Family Picnic!” recalled Guarino.