I'm ready to start back in January. To get the kids ready I will ease back into activities with making snowflakes.
Paper snowflakes
Use coffee filters and fold into fourths. Real snowflakes have six sides but it is too thick for them to cut yet. Show the children how to cut triangles tall, wide, short, skinny patterns along the edges. I encourage them to make two. One to decorate our classroom and another to take home.
Before Christmas I had the children trace their hands in white and make multiple hand shapes over the course of days. I stapled three together to make snowflakes for our classroom door display. Green hands were used to make a pine tree with the lighter green hands holding a heart with the student's pictures in the center.
Some years I've made full snowmen with all their white hands. And green hands to make an evergreen winter tree with white hand snowflakes.
Snowglobes
This project is done in stages over 2-3 days. Show sample globes and writing is done at a center along with doing step by step craft. This gives time for the snow paint to dry as you will see.
- I take pictures of each student acting out playing in the falling snow. Pretend you're catching snowflakes on your tongue. Pretend you can catch a snowflake on your hand/mitten. Some years I have had them dressed in their snowclothes for the picture.
I cut out their picture for them.
- A circle is pretraced to fit the clear plate size just a slightly larger line for cutting line is drawn.
- A trapezoid shape is cut out and the circle is glued to the base. We do the writing project to glue on to this base prior to doing the circle part.
- Then we make a mini pine tree from a 3-inch square. See post in December where we made 9-inch square pine trees folding on the diagonal. We glue the tree on the circle.
- We mix white paint and shaving cream and glue to make a fluffy snow which is painted on adding a few snowflakes in the sky.
A clear plastic plate is splattered with white paint and a toothbrush (I do that). I found them at Target. They don't have any printed words on the bottom.
Then with a hot glue gun, I assembled their creation to look like they ARE in a snowglobe!
- If I lived in a snowglobe writing projects.
Using our five senses, we talk about what we would see, hear, taste, smell and feel if we lived in a snowglobe.
I bring in small snowglobes that I have collected for those who may not have ever seen one.
Living life in a bubble. It is interesting how some can imagine and some just copy. They think it's fun anyway.
Counting snowflakes.
*We have ten frames with snowflakes to count and show numbers. Use dry erase boards to write the number I show using the ten-frames.
*We count groups of snowflakes and put them in order. This is an activity that lends itself to easy differentiation for ability groups. Some groups can start at a higher number to practice counting on from the smallest number (11-20). Some groups need to have a one to start from to do 1-10.
*Use snowflake stamps to stamp out the number.
*Make snow scene cards for the students to count sets or to follow a story problem to solve. You can use erasers for counters or print out snowflakes on cardstock, laminate and cut for quick counters.
Snowflake words
*Print sight words on snowflakes.
*Make memory matching games.
*Write the room looking for sight words on the snowflakes.
*Use the words to build sentences.
*Copy winter words describing winter weather.
Use different color markers and then Q-tips in white paint for the snowflakes.
Science observing a cup of snow melting. Place cups in various parts of the room and record observations.
And then there are Reading stories about snowflakes .....coming soon my favorites.
Then we will move on to making snowmen...more activities coming up so wait and watch.....
Let's make stars.
STAR EXERCISES
First start off with our bodies, spreading feet apart (not in the splits).
Stretch out both arms.
Wave left hand with elbow straight and twist body. Waving hand as it moves in front of their body. (Wave at me.)
Now touch (opposite) right foot and stand back up.
Wave right hand with elbow straight and twist body continuing to wave hand. (wave at me)
Then touch (opposite) left foot and stand up.
Then I show them with lines repeating their body movements. Redrawing to show what they did next.
Hey! They made a star!
They get so excited.
Practice on Dry Erase boards talk through each movement to practice drawing a star!
Make a paper full in different colors. This helps some students who need practice physically crossing their mid line and then on paper. It is important to be able to cross their mid line to make diagonal lines too. Young children have the most difficulty with making these lines. It shows when they struggle to write the letters A or M, N, Kk, Vv Ww and Yy.
They will be making stars all over. Use this excitement to have them draw sets of stars or stars in a pattern. (big, little, colors...)
Hidden Stars
Give students a white crayon to make stars (even just x-line stars) on a white paper. Be sure to press hard with the crayon. It's hard to see..but then use water-base dark blue/black paint to paint left to right to uncover the stars.
What's in the night sky?
Star sticker science:
Give students 5+ sticker stars. Use the kind you need to lick.
Hold them in one hand over a black/dark blue construction paper about 10-12 inches. One, two, three turn over hand and open up. Let the stars drop on the paper. One at a time, students pick up, lick and stick in the same spot.
Then students can connect the stars with chalk or a white crayon. What does your design look like?
This could be an introductory lesson or conclusion to talking about the constellations and star designs.
Books
These help introduce sky watching from our science series.
Now I know Stars is good to begin learning the sun is our closest star!
Then we practice drawing stars in "Counting Stars". On each page students draw the number of stars, learning number words, to the poem. A sentence strip shows the step-by-step lines.
"One star twinkles, Two stars shine, Three stars glow, Four stars sparkle, And five stars fill the sky!"
I'm sure I adapted the poem borrowing it from somewhere.
I've also copied pages from our science series so each student has their own copy as we learn about the day and night sky.
Together answer questions about when do you:
? Eat breakfast, walk the dog, sleep, eat lunch, go to bed, see the moon, see stars? Day or Night
Fold a paper in half (hamburger fold) and title each side with DAY - NIGHT, draw pictures of things they could see in the day sky and in the night sky. Label.
Nursery Rhymes
Of course, include reciting these rhymes.
Twinkle, twinkle little star. Research the other verses!
Starlight, star bright. (making wishes)
Count the Stars
Make cards with varied amounts of stars. Use different color of stars or use same color star stickers on different colors of cards. Place the cards around the room. Make a record sheet for the students to "count around the room" and color the stars corresponding to the card or star color.
Variation for Sight Words on colored stars and students write the word and color the star to match. See sample of record sheet below.
Pull a star card with a letter on it from a bag/box/pile. Write the letter and its pair. See sample of record sheet below.
Ten Frame counting
Make ten frame cards, some filled with ten stars, some blank frames and individual star cards. Gather a small group of students to practice counting together and filling ten frame with stars (can also use star shaped erasers). When the group conceptualizes the value of 10, substitute the filled ten frame card and use an empty frame to count on, build teen numbers, etc.
Hands-on counting practice helps students conceptualize the value of numbers.
Star cards
Put sight words, nonsense words, letters on star cards for games such as Lotto (directly matching same) or letters for letter sound matching.
MEMORY GAMES with star cards to match same word, uppercase to lowercase matching, letter to initial sound picture, rhyming pictures, pictures with same ending sounds.
HIDE IT -Using rectangular word cards facing student, hide a star card and students have to read the word they think the star is behind. Or adapting the letter pair star cards, place a shooting star behind one of the cards. Put the cards on the floor or a pocket chart.
READ THE STARS - place 'star word' cards around the room and give students a star pointer to take turns reading the words.
Fun with stars can work anytime throughout the year. But during the dark days of January and February, it fits best for my classes.
Reach for the stars!
