Angry Birds Activities

Are your children/students crazy over the game Angry Birds?

Sometimes you can harness that enthusiasm and have it overflow into school lessons, by incorporating those goofy characters into their skill sheets and activities.

I remember when Pokemon was all the rage.  My second graders were so addicted, that the principal had to put a ban on card collecting at recess.

To motivate them to study spelling, I drew the characters on their spelling lists and gave bookmarks to anyone who got a 100 on their test.

I couldn’t believe how they improved.

I was reading another teacher’s blog yesterday and a kindergarten teacher was asking others if they had any ideas for letter and number help with an Angry Bird theme, as one of her struggling students really enjoyed the game.

Even my 4-year-old grandson loves to play it.  I thought why not design some activities that will hopefully help this child, as well as others who might also enjoy those crazy little birds and that adorable pig.

Thanks to the free clipart of Melysa Gonzalez at squidoo.com’s party ideas, I was able to make traceable upper and lowercase alphabet cards, as well as number cards. These make great Itty Bitty booklets as well as games.

Make the alphabet cards into Memory Match games, or pass a card out to students and play “I Have-Who Has?”

Sprinkle them on the floor and have students who have an uppercase letter find their lowercase partner.

Play with a partner and put the cards in alphabetical order.  See which team does it the quickest.

Make a bird bag like the one pictured at Squidoo. 

 The template for the bags and the balloons pictured below are at this link. Angry Birds bags & balloon patterns.

Students reach in and pull out a card and identify it.  If they do, they stay in the circle, if they can’t, they are out of the game.

Make the game even more exciting by playing Kaboom.

Pass around the Angry Birds bag.  Instead of showing their card as they choose it, students keep their card a secret.

Teacher chooses a student to start the game.  They show and identify  their card and then call on someone.

That person shows and identifies their card.  If it is a red-bird Kaboom card, they are both out, and everyone yells KABOOM!

Another really fun whole-group game is “SWAT!”  The Dollar Store is currently selling two fly swatters for a dollar. Ironically they are lime green and yellow!

Make 2 balloon birds and tape them to the top of each one of the flyswatters.

Print off my piggy alphabet cards and sprinkle them on the floor face up.

Choose 2 children who have 30 - 60 seconds to swat piggy cards with their angry bird swatters.

Teacher calls out the letter that they should swat. The first bird to swat the card gets the point.

If they don’t slap the correct piggy their turn ends.   I’ve designed "Super Swatter" certificates of praise for the "slap happy' students who participated.

Dabble with Dawn's blog inspired my next game idea. 

She had an Angry Bird birthday party for her son.  Click on the link to view her creative ideas.

Make a Dixie cup tower like Dawn did in this photo, only make one with 26 cups; one for each letter of the alphabet.

Print my piggy letter cards and tape one around each cup.

Give students a small red rubber ball that you have drawn bird features on.

Each child gets one chance to toss the ball at the piggy letter-cup tower.

Children get to score a point for whatever pig letter cups that topple, but only if  they can identify the letter on the cup.

The student with the most points wins the game.

My Y5’s always enjoyed wearing masks, and it truly helped the shyer students come out of their shells, so I designed an Angry Bird “I Spy!” mask for more fun activities.

Run off the bird mask on red, yellow, white, black, and blue construction paper. These are the colors of the Angry Birds.

Students choose a color and cut  out their bird.  You can add that bit of extra pizzazz by adding a feather to the top with a glue dot.

To expedite things, run off and pre-cut the beaks using yellow construction paper.

Students glue their beaks on.

Little ones will need help cutting  the eyeholes.  Tape a Popsicle to the bottom.

Students can now go around the room spying letters and numbers “tweeting” out their success when they find something starting with the letter A, or actually see that letter etc.

Dawn also made a cute piggy mask out of a paper plate.

You can do these same “I Spy” games by making my piggy magnifying glass. Have students use it when they are reading.

Being able to catch and toss a beanbag is a Y5 report card standard, so I designed this activity:

Section off a lime green sheet of tag board into 26 squares.

Write a letter of the alphabet in each square.  Buy a slingshot at The Dollar Store or a novelty shop.

Give each child a chance to sling a red, yellow, blue, or black beanbag onto the tag board.   You can easily make a beanbag by sewing up squares of felt and filling them with rice.

To make the game more Angry Bird appropriate, draw a bird face onto the beanbags, and draw piggy faces in the corner of each square on the tag board.

Whatever letter their beanbag bird lands on, the student identifies.  If they can’t, they are out of the game.

You could also put the Dixie cup letters on the tag board and see how many pig letter cups their beanbag bird knocks down.

Students accumulate points by how many letters they can identify.

After playing games, reward students with pencils topped with an Angry Bird or a piggy.  Add a colored feather to the birds for that finishing touch.

The piggy and bird number and letter sliders are also a fun way to spy and review numbers and letters.

I’ve also included 7 Angry Bird skill sheets including 3 “I Spy” tabletop skill sheets.  Teacher starts by calling out a letter/number.

Students trace the piggy letter/number with a green marker or crayon.  The first child with their hand raised gets to spy the next letter/number ‘til everyone has had a turn.

Finally, I created Piggy Puzzles as a fun way to reinforce upper and lowercase letter recognition and matching. 

Students match the uppercase letter helmet to the lowercase letter pig. Run off my templates on lime green construction paper, laminate and cut the pieces apart. 

This is a fun way to partner children for a game or activity too!

As an incentive, I’ve created Angry Birds certificates of praise + students can keep track of which letters they know by tracing them on their Angry Birds' Letter Logs.

Parents can use playing the real game as an incentive for learning as well.  For each letter/number recognized, their child earns a minute of time on the computer.

Click on the link to view/download the 60-page Angry Birds Learning Activities

If you're looking for some coloring pages, click on the links. Angry Bird Coloring page 1.  Angry Bird Coloring page 2.

I hope these activities are fun for your students and help them blast through those learning blockades!

Be sure and pop back tomorrow for more fun tips!