Snow Day Stats

So…which of you has been the lucky recipient of a snow day, or two, this week?! Don’tcha just love those days?! I thought we’d for sure have one Monday because the entire city shuts.down. at the sight of flurries. It snowed cats & dogs & fluffy white rabbits on Sunday. You KNOW I was up about an hour earlier than normal checking the local news to see if our district was giving us a day to cozy up by the fire. No such luck, but I did get to sleep in. We were on a 2 hour delay. I’ll take it! Since snow is such a novelty in these areas, I knew the kids would have nothing but SNOW on their minds, so I rearranged my Monday plans and we had a little snow day in the class. Mercy. Since a lot of you will be returning to your classes tomorrow after getting a few fabulous days off, I thought you might like this for your babies.

Graphics courtesy of Digi Web Studio

{click the pic to download}

I had the kids break up into groups and survey their classmates. After they tallied all the data, they went back to their desks and showed the data on the graph. Then I had them complete the Interpreting the Data sheet. When they were finished with all that, I let them take construction paper and draw their favorite snow day activity, cut it out, and glue it to a big “SNOW DAY 2011” mural we have hanging outside of our classroom door. My firsties loved it and it was an awesome way to channel all their snow day energy into something productive :)

Mitten Loads of Fun!

We hit the ground running the first week back from break and it was so nice to be back in a routine. We did a lot of mitten themed activities and the kids loved it! Hope you enjoy them, too!!

Of course, we started the week reading The Mitten, by Jan Brett. There was SO much to do with this book!! We created a flow chart to sequence the events, used puppets from the Jan Brett website to retell the story, discussed the story elements using a mitten themed story map, and lots more! {I kept forgetting to charge my camera, so I didn’t take many pictures :(}

We also read, The Hat by Jan Brett and compared it to The Mitten.

{click pic to download}

I included a few mitten themed word work activities in our stations for the kids to manipulate, too! We were working on blends last week, so that was our big focus. NO clue why that danged mitten below turned out gray, but I couldn’t fix the darn thing to save my life! Either way, the kids still loved putting the animals into their matching mittens

Graphics courtesy of DJ Inkers

The kids really liked this activity, too! I bought several pairs of gloves & mittens from the $1 spot at Target. I took three and stuffed each with different letter tiles and a word building mat. Each little mat was programmed with a different blend. The kids had to remove the tiles from the gloves and create words and then record them on the corresponding recording sheet.

Another one of our objectives was to get the kids writing with more detail and describing words. I set out a little adjective activity that really made the kids think! The kids had to choose a mitten from my little stash and use at least 5 words to describe it. Some of my babies only had to write 3 words :) They had to complete three sentences using their bank of descriptive words. Finally, the kids had to complete a simile using The Mitten as their reference. My kids LOVE similes!!

We did some pretty fun mitten themed math activities, too!! Thanks to some FABULOUS teachers in blogland, I found some really great printables and ideas! THANK YOU for sharing, ladies!

I was so excited to find these printables from Heidi over at Swamp Frog First Graders. {If you haven’t checked her out, you should! She’s got TONS of rockin’ printables and great ideas!!} We were reviewing picture graphs last week, so this really came in handy. I had the kids survey all their friends in class…and me!…by asking everyone, “who was your favorite character in, The Mitten?”. They tallied the results and then colored in the picture of their favorite character. Then we created a picture graph and discussed the results! Love it!

I also found these fun activities on Heidi’s blog and I was thrilled because we were also reviewing probability last week, so this was perfect! I have 4 clusters of desks in my room, so I cut out 4 BIG mittens and had my kids reach inside, pull out the character pictures, and tally their data. They loved it! We also discussed the idea of “certain” and “impossible” and I had the kids make predictions as to which characters they thought they’d pick most.

I don’t have any pics of the probability spinner, but that was the kids’ favorite! Thanks so much for sharing, Heidi! Perfect timing :)

Here’s a little packet I put together with a few little math activities & writing ideas. I just didn’t get around to getting pics of everything in action…BOO for me :( Hope it’s helpful!!

Graphics courtesy of Digi Web Studio

Symmetrical Snowflakes

Even though we don’t see much snow here in Texas…with the exception of last year’s record snowfall{s}…we “let it snow” this week with a fun little symmetry activity. This is one of my favorites of the season! This week we were reviewing shapes and patterns so this little lesson fit in perfectly. We reviewed repeating patterns & growing patterns and revisited the concept of symmetry and our symmetrical turkeys. Then I had the kids create symmetrical snowflakes…

And just like real snowflakes, no two were the same!

To make the snowflakes, I cut 4 8x2” strips of blue paper and assembled into “snowflakes”. I die cut tons of white pattern block shapes for the kids to use to create their patterns. {Ummm…I had NO idea we had pattern block die cuts. Shocker of epic proportions. This saves me a LOAD of time cutting each one out piece by piece :)} Then the kids got busy creating their own little snowflakes! This was a great assessment to see which of my kids are still struggling with patterns & symmetry.

Winter Math Games

Happy first day back after a niiiiiiiiiice long break :) I know we’re all excited, right?! Just 10 short weeks ‘til the next vacation, but who’s counting?! Seriously though…I’m already missing my little boys during the day, but I’m SO happy the whole family is back in a routine! Since I’m currently raising the two wildest boys under the age of 4, I didn’t have much time to create a whole lot over the break. I had to spend all my *down time* {yeah right} being a mommy & tending to domestic duties. Thankfully I had lots of planning time today to try and get caught up! Here are a few little games I’ll be putting in our math tubs this week.

Click on the pictures to download the activities.

Race to the Snowman is a fun little 2 player game where the object is to reach the snowman first! The players add & remove marshmallows from their game path to reach the snowman and win the game!

I love toss/tally/graph activities. I usually like to play these with the two sided seasonal cardstock pieces you can buy by the package at teacher store. Since I don’t have any of those handy, I’ll be making my own 2 sided cards using the pictures I included in this download. Since the recording sheet will require the kids to complete several tasks {tally, create a picture graph, create a bar graph, write about the data}, I’ll be working with the kids in small groups to help facilitate this activity.

This fun little two player game will really challenge the kids to create & extend patterns. Read through the instruction page to see how you can vary this activity! And, of course, if you have any better ideas of how these games could be played….please share!!!