Time Cards

Our Scott Foresman story this week, Bunny Day, is a great way to introduce telling time to the hour.  To coincide with the story and to help the children develop an awareness of what they are doing during the day at specific times, I made these time cards specifically for our day.  I am sharing them in Word so that you are able to adapt them to your schedule!  (For the clipart, I used Google images.)

Time Cards

The Mitten and The Snowy Day

Our schedule has been all wonky with a week lost to snow days and two days of delayed start times so we are all just trying to CRAM in as much as we can when we are in class!!

I really enjoy this book and all that can be learned about animals in winter, sharing, habitats, etc.  I wanted to stretch this theme into math by introducing counting by two's using this story.  I started by collecting as many inexpensive mittens as I could get my hands on the past few weeks.  Target's Dollar Spot was a good choice but Walmart also had two pairs for $1-an even better deal!

We started by giving everyone a mitten (1/2 of a pair).  They needed to notice how the mittens were alike and how they were different but how they were all used for the same purpose.  Of course, it came up that some were for girls and some were for boys! 

Next, everyone had to find their "match".

I know this is cheesetastic, I was trying to get the mister to smile since he had to match up to my mitten.  He WASN'T buying it!

Next, every pair got a clothespin with a number on it (2, 4, 6, 8, etc.).

We then clipped them to the clothesline hung over our math board.  Then we practiced and practiced counting by two's.

During math rotations, the extra mittens were placed at a group for the children to pair up and figure out which numbers would come next after 20.

Mrs. Lawson and her daughter came in that afternoon and she read The Mitten to our class.  She bought the book as a gift for them!  Thank you, Mrs. Lawson!

A math job that I got from Deanna Jump-I believe!  It also could have been from Growing Kinders!  I have downloaded SO much from these two ladies that I am having trouble remembering where I got these great activities!

A mitten follow up activity counting by two's.

Snowflake Addition

We are continuing to work on our Winter Books. 
We will add a page for The Mitten next week.

I got the idea for looking out of your window to see a snowman's profile from Musings of Me.  We will add black strips of construction paper to make our window.

They are loving this poem!  We will add it to our Poetry Journals on Friday.

Today we were delayed coming to school because we were supposed to have four inches of snow.  We didn't.  But we went ahead anyway.  I love that one of my girls noticed the pretty gold medal on the cover.  She knew that that meant this was a special book.  :) 

At my table, we wrote what we did on one of our snowy days the week before last.  I provided the sentence starter,"On my snowy day, I..."  they had to finish the sentence themselves. 

At another rotation, the children made themselves as they would look if they had a snowy day with Peter.

This is another page in our Winter Book.

I love all of their different versions of the same thing!!

I have the snowflakes all ready for our Snowflake Experiment on Friday!

Snowflake Experiment

Here are the Lab Report and the Observational Page for the Snowflake Experiment!  We will soak snowflakes made from pipe cleaners in a solution of Borax and hot water and note our observations before and after.  I will post photos as we work on this experiment during the week.

Please click http://staff.bbhcsd.org/gagnem/brrr2010.htm for directions to make the Snow Crystals Snowflakes.

Snowflake Experiment


Snowflake Experiment Lab Report

Matter Matters!

I originally posted on Matter in June but wanted to make the Lab Book available through Scribd. 

http://hicks-thealphabetgarden.blogspot.com/2010/06/liquids-gas-and-solids-lab-book.html

The cool thing about this unit is that you may begin it in January with added pages on snow and ice and then continue it during March for Dr. Seuss' birthday using it with Green Eggs and Ham.  The continuation into spring is easy with the additional pages on bubbles.  I love it!

I plan on putting together some report pages on bubbles, snow and ice so that they may document their facts and observations learned.  I will post when I finish them. 

Matter Lab Book - Liquids, Gases and Solids

Matter Matters

Liquids, Gases, Solids Illustration

Mentos Lab Report

The Rubber Egg Experiment

The Rubber Egg Experiment

Valentine Vocabulary Match Up Game!

This Vocabulary Match Up Game is similar to the Christmas activity from a few posts ago.

I bought two sets of Valentine's cards at Dollar Tree and used them for this activity.

I printed the labels on Avery #8860 (5160 template) to make this a little easier and it was!  This took just a few minutes to put together once I had the labels ready. 

The first day of February we will brainstorm words that make us think of February-of course, I will guide somewhat to make sure these words are included on this list!





Of course, you could use sight words for this activity or you could make it a math activity using numbers and number words.

Valentine Vocabulary Match Up Game!

Labels -Valentine Vocab Match Up Game

A few more February Math Pages-Time & Addition Practice

February Math Addition

February Math Time Worksheet

Be ahead of the Game next Christmas!! December Literacy Activity

I know all of your Christmas is put away BUT I came across a box of Christmas cards at Hobby Lobby for 90% off and the wheels started turning....and have I mentioned that we have been SNOWED IN for four days and will be out tomorrow too!!  It's either this or cleaning the guest room!!

I chose December words that we would brainstorm at the beginning of the month and made them into Vocabulary Cards.

I used clipart and attached a picture if the Vocabulary Word inside the Christmas card.

The children try to match the Vocabulary Card to a picture in one of the Christmas cards.

They can self-check with the Vocabulary Word and picture on the back.

Below are the the documents you may download to make this activity using any type of Christmas Card- preferably one with Santa on the front OR you can change the name of the game to match any card that you find on sale... Snowman Match Up Game, Christmas Tree Match Up Game, etc. I also included a follow up worksheet for the children to record some of the words they learned from the game. 

I formatted the documents to work with Avery Shipping Labels (2" x 4") to make it easier to put this activity together.  Of course, I didn't have any of said address labels to make this myself. :) 

But I'm here for you... cue martyr music. 

Happy Snow Days to you!

December Literacy Center Activity.docx.Doc Worksheet

December Literacy Center Activity

December Literacy Center Activity 2

December Literacy Center Activity 3

December Literacy Center Activity Clipart

December Literacy Center Activity Clipart 2