Monday, January 16, 2012

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

We've had an unusually warm winter here in central Illinois; last week we had our first stick-around snow!  Normally, I'm waaaaay okay with no snow, but I was starting to get worried that we'd never get to our snow science activities!  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it hangs on a few more days, since we still need to melt and filter our snow this week.  It's an idea I found in an old Mailbox magazine and is great for shutting down all that snow eating! :)  Pictures to come!

I finally pulled out our snow-themed literacy activities last week.  Take a look!

Putting together short a onset and rime snowmen puzzles
 These puzzles were so simple to make.  Simply use clipart and text boxes to put the picture on the snowman's hat, the onset on the middle ball, and the rime on the bottom.  After printing and laminating, cut the snowmen in three pieces (yes, you'll feel a teensy bit morbid :)).  For some of my strugglers having the last two sounds together was a little frustrating, but eventually everyone started blending the rimes much better.  Once finished, they completed a sentence recording sheet



They LOVE writing the room with this activity tweaked from an activity my mom brought back from a conference.  I wrote sight words on snowflake post-its from Target's dollar spot and hid them all around our classroom.  The kindergarteners search the room for the numbered words and write them on a recording sheet.  This activity is such a favorite I can get away with putting it in Literacy Centers twice!  Sweet!  The second time I ask them to write a sentence to go with two of the snowflakes they "caught."


I've also put Meltdown, a wonderful sight word game, and Snowman Bingo both from Kelly's Kindergarten to the Letters Center.   If you have never visited her website go and bookmark it immediately!  The best part is that she's made a lot of her documents changeable.  Thank you Kelly!

Finally, we read a how-to make a snowflake book in reading groups.  I couldn't find one, so I made one.  I tried to differentiate by making different levels for the books.  I labeled them with the Fountas and Pinnell levels my groups were in, but since I wrote them they are NOT actually tested at that level.  In fact, they may be a little bit harder than the levels I put them on.    You are more than welcome to use them.  I ordered it so that you can print them two-sided, stack one page on top of the other, fold, staple, and done!  Enjoy!
How To Make A Snowman Level A
How To Make A Snowman Level B
How To Make A Snowman Level C
How To Make A Snowman Level D
*note:  I used photographs for the illustrations, which makes the files really large.  It won't show you a preview since it's so large, but I promise no viruses are included! :)

No comments:

Post a Comment