Put the Bill of Rights to music and let the kids sing about the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. You can either choose songs that already exist -- pluck the lyrics and music off Internet sites, such as the ones found at Totally Third Grade -- or you and your students can make up your own. Divide your class into 10 small groups of two to three students each and assign each group one of the amendments. Have them come up with a rap lyric that explains the amendment. Then the entire class can perform the rap song together.
Get your students marching. Have them make signs with one poster for each of the freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Mount the posters on sticks and hold a parade outside. Have students march in a circle where they always turn right to add an additional play on the word "rights." You can also choose one of the rights and ask the class to imagine what it would be like to not have that right or to have that right taken away. Have students create a puppet show or perform a short skit that demonstrates a situation where someone is denied one of the freedoms in the Bill of Rights.
Design art class lessons around the Bill of Rights. Pull out one word from each amendment, for example, "Press" or "Association," and define what it means as a right. Then give students construction paper and encourage them to cut out shapes to create a mosaic picture that illustrates that right. Encourage them to think as abstractly as possible, though this will be a challenge for most third graders. You can also give students old magazines and let them find pictures of people exercising their rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Have them create a collage that includes the words in at least one of the amendments.
After discussing what the Bill of Rights is, have students create a Bill of Rights for the classroom. For example, ask them what freedoms they think should be guaranteed. Have them mimic the style of the first 10 amendments as they write out these freedoms. Lead students in writing a poem about the Bill of Rights. You can have them write a haiku, a 10-line poem with one line for each amendment or have them pick out a single word and use each letter of that word as the initial line of a poem. Alternatively, you can give each student a copy of the Bill of Rights and have them search for particular parts of speech. For example, you could have them circle each noun and put a square around each verb. If you want to make the activity more physical, read the Bill of Rights out loud and tell students to stand up each time they hear a noun, put their hands on their heads each time they hear a verb and clap their hands each time they hear an adjective.