Out of the mystery box, I took a baggie that had water, two buttons and a carrot in it. I told the children that when I went out that morning to get the newspaper, I found these things sitting in my front yard. I asked them if they knew what it was. It didn't take many guesses before someone came up with the answer of a melted snowman.
This led into a discussion of how do you make a snowman. Together we sequenced three steps on how to make a snowman. Then the students had to draw and write their own three steps.
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| "Roll 3 balls. Large medium small. Then decorate." Daniel's sequencing. |
We learned how to make a snowflake out of a coffee filter. Fold the coffee filter in half 3 times. Then you take little snips out of the sides. Open it up to find a beautiful snowflake!
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| coffee filter snowflakes |
For our lesson on animals in winter and hibernation, the students brought a stuffed animal to school. We read non-fiction books and researched on the internet (National Geographic for Kids) to learn about animal behavior during the winter. Some animals change colors (camouflage) to blend in with the environment for survival. Other animals hibernate through the winter. We learned how the animal prepares for hibernation, and then we acted it out with our stuffed animals.
In order for us to build up enough fat to make it through the winter, we ate popcorn. We ate and ate and ate and became very fat. As Fall arrived and the weather started to turn cold, we found a nice, snug place to settle down for the winter. When winter came, we climbed into our sleeping spot and went to sleep for the long winter. The temperature dropped, the wind blew and the snow fell, but we never woke up. Then as Spring came, we started to stir in our beds. When we woke up, we were really, really hungry and it was time to start eating again and start the cycle of hibernation all over again.
There is nothing better for a teacher than at the end of a learning activity for the students to shout out, "That was fun!" They will not forget the hibernation process for awhile.
Here are pictures of us hibernating through the winter with our stuffed animals.
Making Shapes
Kindergarten started a new math unit called Making Shapes. This is one of my favorite units. We started out on a shape hunt looking for items in our classroom that were in the shape of a circle, square, rectangle and a triangle.
We read the book, The Shape of Things by Dayle Ann Dodds.
The students were instructed to choose one shape, glue it on their paper and to turn the shape into something. We used the frame, "A ____ becomes a ______."
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| Daniel writes, "A triangle becomes a reindeer." |
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| Ivan writes, "An oval becomes a spaceship." |
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| Noah writes, "A circle becomes a spot." (This is our class reward spot.) |
