Saturday, January 14, 2012

Snowmen Part 1

I'm just gonna be honest.....

I miss Michigan!!!!
Winter in Florida is not the same.
This week we spent quite a bit of time talking about winter and snow, since it is definitely something my students don't experience here in South Florida. I tried to sneak little tidbits into our morning message to see how much they knew by posing questions like :
What happens in the winter?
What can you do in the snow?
What do you wear in the snow?
What do you need for a snowman?
What does snow look like? Feel like?

We actually had quite a lengthy discussion about what to wear in the snow since some of my little hunny's think skinny jeans and skirts would cut it!! OH NO.... we discussed the word WATERPROOF! HAH! I need to find a picture of me as a child in my snowsuit to show them......

Here's our how to make a snowman interactive writing....
Sorry it's hard to read, they wrote (with their own spelling):
1. Mak two snow balls.
2. Adu eyes and a math.
3. Adu a nsos and arms.
4. Ptu a skarf adn hat.

Along with their how to make a snowman books:

We also spent some time talking about the different parts of snowmen and labeling them

We talked about MLK this week during Social Studies. We started the week talking about our dreams and made this cute project:

Then, we did the tale of two eggs experiment. We looked at both brown and white eggs and talked about how they were different on the outside. Then we predicted what we would see on the inside and cracked them open. The kids were SO SURPRISED that they were the same on the inside. I asked them how eggs are like people, and they totally got it! I heard things like "even though we are different colors we are the same on the inside" and "some people are light and some people are dark but we all have hearts and feelings". They made so many connections between eggs and people!! You can get this experiment for free HERE.

After I had laid the foundations by talking about dreams and people/eggs being the same on the inside even though they are different on the outside THEN we read about MLK and his dreams for equality. Again, the kids made so many connections I was blown away. I've struggled in the past with teaching this but I think I've finally got it.

We made this chart about him:

We also talked about the letter Oo this week! I think O is one of the harder letters to teach.... you put it next to so many other letters and it completely changes how it sounds!

And look what came from Donors Choose!

We'll continue talking about both MLK and winter/snow next week. Here are some of our winter centers:
medial sounds

blends - just starting these!

unscrambling sight words

Snowmen have... Pocket Chart

Winter Books in the Library

The Smiley Snowman at the Listening Center

Stamping ending sounds (he must have done rocket shiP instead of rocket!)

Sorting Ending Sounds

Sorting ending sounds (can you tell we are really working on this!!)

 And some of the books we enjoyed this week:










Centers from:
Katleen Pederson
Julie Lee & Deanna Jump
Jamie Mayas

MLK mini unit from Erin Eberhart

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