Snowflake Day!

I know there must be an awful lot of us who are desperately working to incorporate our own units/activities into our curriculum and still meet all of our standards and expectations with our mandatory reading programs.  I actually enjoy the Scott Foresman series our state adopted but find it odd to have a seed unit in the middle of winter and an Antarctic story just when spring is about to burst!  Oh, well, we dance the dance, don't we?  That being said, after completing all that was required with our program last week and having spent two days Dibeling I was ready for Friday which I decided would be Snowflake Day!

First, we read The Little Snowflake.  We talked about some snowflake facts and looked at photos of actual snowflakes.

We then learned how good scientists solve a problem using the Scientific Method.  These pages are available through Deanna Jump's  website for free.  If you haven't checked out her website and her Teachers Pay Teachers account, you are missing out on a goldmine!  I just bought her America unit and am so excited to get it going next week!  Check her out at
http://mrsjumpsclass.blogspot.com/ .

We started by asking ourselves the question, "What will happen to our snowflakes after we soak them in hot water and borax?  Will they change?  How will they change?  What will they look like?"

Next, we came up with our own hypotheses.  It was very interesting to see what the children thought would happen.

We set everything up in our Science Corner.  I used an electric skillet with the lid on to boil the water.

I bought a package of 24 dowels from Hobby Lobby (these were left over from our Christmas wreath banner parent gift).  They were juuuuuust long enough to reach each side of the tub! 

After the water boiled, I added the water and the Borax to the tub and stirred well.

I called one table at a time to hang their snowflakes on a dowel for me to place in the tub.

A few fell in, that's OK.  We'll see how they turn out!

Then we completed our Snowflake Experiment page.  It was interesting to see how they illustrated their hypothesis.

On Monday, we will complete our Lab Report after we have observed what happened to our snowflakes over the weekend.  This will all go into a Science Lab Book that will go home at the end of the year.

Next, we made our own snowflakes just like Suzan at Krazy for Kindergarten does with her class.  I loved this activity!   



Then they had to illustrate the snowflake that they made in their math journal and write a sentence about it. She wrote,  "I made a snowflake."



The kids were able to cut their own snowflake and decorate it with sequins and foam snowflakes.

I am concentrating...

When they came to my table, we wrote snowflake facts we had learned.  Some students need help sounding out the words and shaping their sentence.  But for the most part, I let them sound out their own sentences to see if they are hearing beginning, middle and ending sounds. All of our sight words that we have learned so far are on their Sight Word rings and our Word Wall for them to use. They are also able to check around the room for number, vocabulary and science words we have listed.

She wrote, " All snowflakes have six points.  They are all different."
This is the last page to go into our Winter Book. 
Good work, people!

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!