The Olympics Are Coming: Research A Sport

Curling? Luge? Biathlon? Nordic Combined? The Winter Olympics has some obscure sports. In order to understand the sports that will be played in the Winter Olympics, my students worked in partners to researchthe some of the non traditional sports. Each of them filled out an Olympics book and together they created a poster to present to the class. They loved watching videos about their sport and really got into the research!

 

 Moving onto the excellent posters for their presentations:

My students are ready for the Winter Olympics and are going to know so much about the sports as they watch!

The Olympics Are Coming: Tracking Medals

My students were four and five years old the last time the Winter Olympics rolled around so they have a lot to catch up on. They are working in partners to research a Winter Olympic sport. As well, throughout the Olympics, students will track medals won by countries. I looked up the top nine winningest countries in recent Winter Olympics. Then I assigned the students to a country. They colored the flag of that country and we posted their tracking sheets at the front of our classroom. We will look up medal totals each day and update our tallies.

Colorful Penguin Art

I found this art project through Pinterest and knew my students had to do it! We used foam brushes and make stripes on color on our background. I told the students not to clean off their brushes between color changes so there would be good blending of colors.

Then, we tore a snowy hill for our penguins to stand on. Putting our color background aside, we got to work on constructing our penguins. Students used black paper and made a tombstone-like shape for the penguin body and then a second, smaller one in white for the penguin belly. Next, we used our scrapes to create eyes and wings. Finally, we added an orange beak and feet. A little rubber cement and the penguins were safely on their snowy hills with bright backgrounds.
Here is my penguin:

 

Student penguins:

Technical Writing: How To Build A Snowman

Each year, as we are anticipating the arrival of our snowstorm(s), we write a technical piece How To Build A Snowman. We focus on writing sequential paragraphs instead of 1., 2., 3., etc. steps. We discussed all the sequence and transition words they would be able to use in their writing. Then we drafted!

As they edited with a partner, each student read their directions aloud. Their partner used a whiteboard to draw the directions they were hearing. This really helped the students understand what they were missing from their directions. There were many drawing with three snowballs side by side because the author forgot to include the stacking step :)

After final drafts were written, students decorated their own snowman to 'hold' their writing. These snowmen looked more festive than the ones we have made in the past.

 

Winter Door Decorations

Our classroom door needed a little pizazz when coming back from Winter Break. I found a resource through Pinterest from The Sharpened Pencil and couldn't wait to get it into my kiddo's hands! I asked them to write about what they most enjoy about winter.

Ice Experiment

I found this great ice experiment from The Mailbox magazine. After having no school this past Monday because it was too cold to be outside, I knew an experiment with ice was perfect! I froze three pie pans of ice at home, ready to be use by smaller groups of students.

I can't get it to turn sideways, sorry!

The students tested five objects (marble, yarn, paper clip, pencil, rock) on the ice. They were testing how easily the objects moved across the ice. As the students took turns tapping the objects to see if they moved over the ice, they recorded their observations on their paper. They also answered four questions about which objects moved easily/not easily in the ice pan.

After the students tested the five objects listed on the recording paper, I asked the groups to choose at least three more objects in our classroom to test. They LOVED choosing their own testing objects!

Snow/Cold Day = Cooking Day!

Well, no school for us today! That means new recipes to try and treats to make for me :)

The first thing I made was pull-apart (or monkey) bread. We had some extra Pillsbury Grands Biscuits on hand and I searched Pinterest for a treat to make. And this recipe was SO EASY! Basically, you cut the biscuits in fourths, roll them into balls, then roll each ball in sugar & cinnamon, plop it in your Bundt pan, top with a brown sugar syrup, and bake for 30 minutes at 350*. For the full recipe, visit Main St. Cuisine.

 

In my crockpot right now is Hash Brown Potato Soup! The best part of this recipe is the simplicity of it. Instead of peeling and boiling potatoes before even beginning the soup, you only have to use frozen hash browns. Such a time saver! To get the full recipe, visit Pearls, Handcuffs, and Happy Hour.

Snow Day Calculator

As I was looking through blogs this evening, I found a link to a Snow Day Calculator on Clutter Free Classroom. How much fun is that?! Tomorrow is the teachers' first day back: inservice Thursday and Friday. We are getting a dusting of snow this evening, about 2 inches total; so we'll be at work tomorrow.

Snow Day Calculator

Santa's Stuck - Let's Help!

Last week, we wrote our rough drafts of Santa's Stuck. We read (most of) Santa's Stuck and each student came up with their own ending as if Santa were stuck at their house.

After the students had their basic idea down, I wrote my own rough draft (I didn't want anyone stealing my idea!). Then, we worked together as a group to add some pizazz to it with descriptive words and vibrant verbs. They were great! Then, the students did what we did together to their own paper. They worked with a peer to revise and edit.

Here are our final drafts: