Candy Heart Math {& A Making Words Activity}

I know Valentine’s Day is over, but I like to extend my Valentine-ish activities throughout the month. After all, February is the month of LOVE, right?! Well, that’s what I’m goin’ with anyway. Candy hearts are my favorite February math manipulative and here are a couple of little math printables & activities for you!!

The first is a little candy heart graph. I know there are a GAJILLION of these floating around right now. I like to graph the number of letters in the conversation. I pass out a large conversation heart to each kiddo and have them count the number of letters on the heart. Then we create a big ol’ graph on a giant heart to show all the data. I’ll come back with a pic later this week!!

I also love this little candy heart probability activity. I placed a set of conversation hearts in a brown paper bag. I made 4 bags…one for each table. In each bag, I added a different assortment of colored hearts, but I made sure that there was A LOT of one particular color. For example, in one bag I put 12 pink, 2 purple, 1 white, 1 green, and 3 yellow hearts.

The kids had to reach inside the bag…without looking…and pull out a heart {10 different times}. On the corresponding sheet, the kids had to tally the color they pulled. If they pulled out a pink heart, they had to put a tally inside the heart labeled pink.

Throughout the activity, the kids were having awesome discussions. They talked about how they kept pulling out the same color over and over and then…on their own…started making predictions as to why that was happening. Sweet!! After each person at their table had a turn to pull 10 different hearts, I had the kids empty their bags so they could see what was inside and then they wrote about it.

Click on the pic to download the printables to go with these activities!!

Speaking of candy hearts, I found these darling little heart-shaped boxes at the Dollar Tree and snatched ‘em up. I knew they’d be perfect for something ;) I put these in our Word Work station for a little making words activity.

I labeled each with a different number and filled them with letter tiles to spell different popcorn words or chunk/digraph words. The kids had to open up the hearts, spill the tiles, and spell a word using those letters. After they spelled a new word, they had to write it in the matching heart on the corresponding sheet.

My favorite thing about these little boxes is that I can use them for ANYTHING!! I think I’ll put coins in them next week for a little hands-on money activity!!

Click the pic to download your copy of the recording sheet.

Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town

I have a thing for Santas. I really do. I have a HUGE collection here at the house and I just can’t get enough of him! He’s so dang cute! SO…it would only stand to reason that I’d want to include a few Santa activities in the classroom as well :) I know that a lot of kids don’t celebrate Christmas, but this year EVERY single one of my kiddos does…so that makes planning a little bit easier for me. However, this hasn’t always been the case! I guess you could say I’m taking advantage of it this year :)

I read a book about Santa the other day…can’t remember which one…and had the kids make these cute little scrapbook Santas after we read the story. I LOVE how different they all turned out! And I swear each one of them represents the kids’ personalities to a T!!! SO cute!

Have you ever read the story, A New Improved Santa?!?!

I haven’t read this to my kids yet, but it’s DARLING! It’s all about Santa & how he feels like he’s losing his “edge”, so he tries out a bunch of different styles…spiky hair, the “gangsta” look, etc. Anyway, it’s hilarious and I know the kids will LOVE it! I’m planning on reading it to them and then having them create a Santa with a new & improved look! And then, of course, they’ll write about it. Maybe about why Santa needs a new look OR what he thinks about his new style. Still thinking about that, but that’s just an idea for ya!

Did y’all know that Santa’s really a cowboy at heart?! Well…if you’re from Texas…I know that’s what you believe ;) HA! We loved the idea of a “Cowboy Christmas” so we read a few stories with a real Southern drawl…

Then we made our own little cowboy Santas! {I forgot to take pics of the kid’s Santas…they were SO funny!} We gave each of the kids a speech bubble and had the kids write about what SANTA wants for Christmas! It was so cute reading their responses…apparently, Santa wants an iphone, an ipad, material for making stuff?!?!, an American Girl doll, new reindeer, cookies & milk, and a new sleigh. HA!

And here are a few activities for your downloading pleasure ;) {Just click on the pics to download your copies :)}

The directions are included in this little Santa activity…it can be used several different ways! I made sure it was “Kindergarten friendly” as well :)

Here’s a fun little making words activity! Let me know if you need a better explanation that the directions provide ;)

This is a little fact family sorting activity. I didn’t include a recording sheet because I’m planning on having the kids make their own fact family tree out of construction paper as an extension to this activity.

Mystery Words

This week was a chunk week review for us, so I made up a little activity that would get the kids thinking about word families & popcorn words. I took a couple of lunch bags and filled them with letter tiles. In one bag, I included the letters contained in all of our popcorn words {to date}. In the other bag, I included all the vowels & word endings to the chunks we’ve learned thus far, plus a few additional letters. The kids had to pick a bag and use the tiles inside to make words. I told them to read the room if they had trouble figuring out what words to make. {We’ve got our chunk charts & popcorn words ALL over the room, so I knew they wouldn’t have too much trouble ;)} They also had to record the words they made on a separate recording sheet. This is definitely an activity I’ll keep recycling throughout the year! It really got them thinking and it was so fun to see what words they made! One of my sweeties spelled my youngest son’s name and was SO proud of herself :) Hey…whatever works!! Love it!

Stamp A Spider

I included a little stamping activity in our Word Work station this week that the kids just loved! Stamp-a-Spider! They used our chunks of the week to stamp short o words {-ot, –op, –og} onto strips of paper that became the spider’s legs. I had a sweet mom pre-cut the spider body templates so that all the kids had to do were stamp the chunk words! I think I’ll keep this activity out for the next few weeks as a choice for Word Work!!

click to download

STAMP A SPIDER