Winter Activities

Here is a fun roundup of some of my favorite activities to do in the winter!

Penguin Art activity.  Find the full step-by-step tutorial here. 

Arctic and Antarctic Measuring and Sorting. 

Greater Than and Less Than review

Free Choice Watercolor painting for morning work. 

3 day Interactive Read-Aloud of "Bear Has a Story to Tell."  We have also enjoyed doing popsicle stick puppets for re-telling.  You can download some for free here.  

3 Day Interactive Read-Alouds.  Pictures for this anchor chart can be downloaded directly from Jan Brett's Website.  

I hope you enjoyed these ideas and can use some of them in your classroom!  

Five for Friday-Valentine's Week

Once again I'm happy to be linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching's Five for Friday linky party!  

This week we did a 2-day interactive read-alound using Little Mouse's Big Valentine by Thacher Hurd.  It is a cute book about a mouse who makes a huge valentine card and then finds that none of his friends want it because of its size.  He goes on a bit of an adventure and then finds another mouse friend.  Together they cut the huge valentine into a bunch of smaller ones and give them away.  

I liked some of the vocabulary in the book, so we talked about it and made a chart.  I forgot to take a picture of the chart after we added the definitions, but here is the before picture!

We worked on beginning, middle and end with this book.  I sent each student to their table with a mini sticky note and they needed to draw a picture of what happened at the beginning (we discussed it as a whole group).  When they were finished their "quick draw" they came back to the carpet area and put their sticky note under the "Beginning" title.  We repeated the process for the middle and end.  The students *loved* this activity.  It was freeing for them because it was so quick and because there was no writing involved.  I think it's important to make sure to include activities like this without writing because most students are able to easily draw a picture, and they are practicing this comprehension strategy without being slowed down by the writing process.  It's all a balance.  I loved seeing how much fun the students had with it.  Sticky notes are always fun :)

I thought that I would share how I track my guided reading group meetings.  I cannot plan my groups "in stone" because I need flexibility for how I teach and for how certain students are doing each day.  But, I want to make sure to keep tabs on how frequently I meet with each group so that I don't accidentally neglect one group.  I quickly made up this chart so that I could code the date and see how many times I've met with them.  I also write the book we are working on in case of confusion!   You can see that I haven't met equally, but it's because some groups are getting extra time because of their needs. 

Of course it was Valentine's week!  We made these cute valentine people bags to collect our cards and treats in.  I love how unique they are and the kids had a blast making them.  

We do our morning message on the Smart Board.  On Friday we talked about what "love" is.  The students came up with: Love is hugs, love is family, love is friendship, love is caring, love is Daddy working and mommy doing the laundry, love is being nice, etc. Our Valentine's Day celebration included making a booklet about what love is, making a flip book about different things that the students love (like food, activities, books, etc.), some Valentine's math, and making Valentine cards for staff members. 

  In the afternoon we watched a movie and had lots of treats. One mother even prepared a platter that had EVERYTHING cut in heart shapes.  Cucumbers, carrots, cheese, cantaloupe, and watermelon!  

Earlier in the week we did this quick math actitivity where the students used a variety of heart shapes and then had to complete the writing "I used *number* to make a *animal*.  There were a lot of owls!  Pictured below we have two owls, a butterfly, and a kitten.  I put some of them up on the bulletin board, but they will all go into a class book.

I love having at least one super-simple math center going in my rotation.  I've found that just by adding in some seasonal or unique manipulatives, a straightforward dice game becomes new and fun!  Dollar stores (and the Dollar Spot at Target) almost always have something to use!  For this game, students simply rolled the oversized dice and added the numbers together.  The player with the largest sum got to take an eraser.  At the end, whoever had the most erasers won.  Easy peasy and NO PREP, not even paper. 

Have a wonderful weekend!  I plan to spend time with my family, take some maternity photos for a friend, and hopefully spend some time outside! 

Five For Friday- Bear Has a Story to Tell, Measurement, and Morning Art

I'm happy to be linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five For Friday Linky!  Here is a little bit about our week in first grade!  

February has arrived, and Valentine's Day is around the corner.  In December my assistant and I decorated our door with a penguin knowing that we would be able to enjoy it through the holiday season and through January.  Now with the addition of hearts to the penguin's scarf, the penguin gets to hang around through Valentine's Day :)  

My kinder-daughter did a fabulous job of updating the penguin's wardrobe. 

Every week (usually on Friday mornings) we do watercolor painting as our morning work.  We. love. it.  It starts our day off with such a lovely calm.  Many students like to draw with sharpies first and then paint in.  I love that we are regularly using the watercolor paints and that the students have the opportunity for free artistic expression.  Every once in a while I will put out directed drawing instruction sheets on the table or projected on the screen in case students want to use them for inspiration, but they are never required.  I encourage you to try this routine out once per week.  On the other days of the week my students are completing their academic morning work, but art is important too! 

 

Left to their own devices, children can come up with some wonderful artwork!  This student created her own "Ten on the Sled"-inspired" picture!

 This student is all about the process, and he created a visually pleasing masterpiece!

Our special story of the week was "Bear Has a Story To Tell."  It is a lovely story about a bear who tries to tell a story to his friends, but his friends are too busy getting ready for winter, so they don't have time.  Bear gets sleepy and falls asleep, and once he wakes up in spring he has forgotten his story.  The book ends in a delightful way that the students really enjoy.  The pictures in the book are lovely and it's a fairly quick read with obvious science connections.  

On Day 1 we read the book and discussed some of our predictions and connections.

On Day 2 we discussed a chart we had made about adaptations and preparations that some animals make for winter.  I then read them a short non-fiction book about hibernation and we played a drama game about animals in winter.  Because had discussed some animals that hibernate, migrate, etc. we were ready.  I would say something like, "snake" and the students would act as a hibernating snake.  But then I would call out an animal that does not hibernate (without reminding them that it doesn't hibernate or migrate, etc.) and they would act out what that animal might do during winter.  I called out ducks, flamingos, frogs, monkeys, bears, etc.  I saved one of the best ones for last: Bats.  I instructed them to be creative to show what a hibernating bat might look like.  The students CLEARLY were into it as you can see below:

After playing this dramatic game, I brought the students back to the carpet and we discussed the three vocabulary words and re-read the story along with a question:  What else could bear have said to convince his friends to take the time to listen to his story before winter?  The students came up with some really great answers! 

Day 3 was the time for reading the story again and then re-telling the story.  I actually showed the video of the book to the students instead of reading the book myself for the third time.  This book is on Bookflix.  After watching we moved onto the re-telling portion, I had different students describe what happened in the book (in order).  As each student told a part, I added the corresponding animal picture to our anchor chart.  

 After we re-told the story as a class, I let them know that they could each make their own puppet set.  They LOVE doing that, so they were happily engaged in the coloring, cutting and taping job.  To download your own copy of these animal puppets, click here. 

I actually ran out of popsicle sticks (gasp!) so I just gave each student three popsicle sticks and they put the bear on one, and then put the other animals front and back sharing the final two sticks.

As the students finished, they got into groups and re-told the story with their puppets.  I'm always amazed at how well they can remember the order and even exact words and phrases.  They usually remember the key vocabulary words that we focused on and include them as well!  Also, every puppet show needs an audience.  The students are always eager to pull up a chair and watch a few versions of the show.  The students prefer to use the chart stand as their puppet theater, which I think is fantastic, because the anchor chart is right there :)

We continued our unit on measurement.  We sorted our Polar measurement animal cards into two groups: Arctic and Antarctic animals.  I had the students point up if they thought the animal was an Arctic animal, and point down if they thought it was an Antarctic animal.  Pretty much my main goal was to reinforce that penguins and polar bears do not live together! 

 I then review how to measure using a non-standard ruler and some of the students who hadn't done this activity yet were able to complete it.

This week we also tried out some standard measurement using centimeters.  For one task the students were supposed to measure the parts of a house on handout that I've had for years (I don't have the file for it---it is a hand-drawn page).  I found that the students were measuring the arrows on the page, so we found success when I quickly used a highlighter to indicate which lines the students were to be measuring.  

When the students were finished on the front they were to turn over the page and document their measurement of random items around the room (they had to be smaller than the ruler).  Some students measured my shoe, and then the principal walked in.  I right away asked him if he would be willing to have his shoes measured (the answer was yes, of course!) and the students were eager to measure some more :)

Our phonics focus this week was on the ow/ou sound as in groundhog and crown.  We did some practicing on our whiteboards.  I had the students write out "ow" and "ou" on sticky notes and just change out the other letters.  It worked really well and the students felt rebellious because I allowed them to *gasp* use their whiteboard markers to write on the tiny post-it notes!  They enjoyed keeping a running record of their words by drawing pictures around the word area. This was nice because it gave the quicker students something to do while waiting for others.  

I hope you were able to get some ideas from this post.  I had a great weekend and I'm looking forward to a fun weekend with my family! 

Be sure to check out the other posts in the Five For Friday linky!

Penguin Art

We had a great time making these adorable penguin pictures this week. I found the idea on pinterest, but there wasn't a tutorial, so I thought I would give it a try and put my own spin on the project.   It takes quite a number of steps to make these, but they aren't difficult.  We managed to do them in one day.  We did the painting part in the morning as a center, and did the rest in the hour after lunch time.

Please excuse the photography in this post.  These were taken with my phone with no natural light!

Step 1: Assemble your materials.  You will need:

-background paper 8.5 by 11 or so (I used white card stock)

-white paper for bellies (half of a 8.5 paper for each person)

-black paper for bodies and wings

-strip of orange paper for beak and feet

-black sharpie (one that won't run if it gets wet)

-at least three shades of blue/purple paint

-paintbrush(es)

-scissors

-glue stick

-snowflake punches (optional)

Step 2: Draw gentle curved lines for a nearby hill and a faraway hill.  Your paper will then be divided into three sections.  One of the sections will be sky and two will be hills.  If your students need to, they can first draw with pencil and go over it with marker.  My first graders just went straight to the sharpie.  

Step 2: Paint each section a different shade of a cool color like blue or purple.  Encourage students to use a swirly brush motion for the sky section to add interest. Allow to dry.

Step 3: Using black construction paper, make the shapes for one large penguin and one small penguin.  We did them in elongated semi-circle shapes.  Semi-ovals?  :)  If you fold your 9 by 12 construction paper as I did below, you can get 2 large penguins and 4 small penguins out of one sheet.  If you need to save time, you can pre-cut the black penguin shapes for your students, or you can just give them the rectangles and instruct them to make their shapes as big as possible to fit their rectangle.  

Step 4: Cut the black penguin body shapes, and create wing shapes out of the leftover black paper.  

If you are pre-cutting the body shapes for your students, they won't have leftover paper to work with, so they will need a black rectangle to create their wing shapes.  

Step 5: Choose if you like the look of a crayon belly or a paper belly.  I prefer the paper.  Have the students create the shape by placing their black body over the white paper and tracing.  Then they just need to draw a smaller semi-circle shape inside and cut it out. 

 

Step 6: Glue the wings and belly pieces.

 

Step 7: Create beaks and feet out of orange paper, and draw eyes with the black sharpie. 

Step 8: Glue the penguins on, ensuring that the smaller penguin is behind, on the far away hill.  I told my students a little penguin story to talk about linear perspective to make sure they understood that we were trying to show that items of the same size appear to be different sizes when one is far away and one is close.  

If you have a snowflake punch, punch 6-8 snowflakes and then glue them all around.  It looks nice if at least one snowflake overlaps a penguin, but I didn't require it.  I try to not to be overly restrictive with things like this, since it's my students' art after all!  

Here are some lovely student samples: 

And here are some of them up on the bulletin board:

Have fun!  Let me know if you try this out and how it goes!

If you are studying penguins or other polar animals right now, but you know you will be doing more animal research with your students this year, try snapping up my Animal Research note-taking forms and report pages.  You can use them for any animal and get your students used to the format.  

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Animal-Research-1231323

Click on the picture to check it out.