I used to LOVE Mad Libs when I was a kid. One of my favorite, really vivid memories of 5th grade is being in class when our teacher would review parts of speech with us by using them. He would call out a part of speech and hands would shoot up in the air to take a turn contributing a word to the collaborative effort of completing what we hoped would be a hilarious story when we finished. The best part was watching our teacher's face as he considered how the words given by us would alter the meanings of the story. He would giggle to himself and nod, and sometimes, if he REALLY liked where the story was going, he would whisper, just loudly enough for us to hear, "Oh...this is going to be so good!" The suspense was just this side of agonizing to a bunch of 9 and 10 year old kiddos waiting for the biggest laugh ever! Then, when all of the blanks were filled in, he read it...as dramatically as he could, and we would laugh and beg to do another one. Not a bad way to review some grammar!
For a Christmas time activity that I hope will bring your students the gift of laughter, I am giving you my first attempt of writing my own Mad Lib as a FREEBIE. In this example, Santa is writing back to a child that seems to have made his/her way to the naughty list.
(Click image to view and download your copy)
Enjoy!
UPDATE: If your classes enjoyed Santa's Letter, I do have three more Festive Fill-ins available at my store, PLUS my Grammar At a Glance to help your students with choosing the correct parts of speech for each passage:
(Click the image to check it out.)
Happy Holidays!
