For snow and mittens weeks at the ECDC we began with plenty of great books!
One of our first art projects was to paint snowmen after reading Snowmen at Night, one of our favorites.
After making some snowmen shapes out of white paint, we waited for them to dry and cut them out. Later I helped them add whatever they wanted to accessorize their snow-people with and we added a writing extension activity.
Here's a few of the finished products. Adorable as usual!
During circle time we labeled a snowman as a group.
Then we drew snowmen and counted arms, buttons and noses from a Pinterest inspired activity. I loved this center because they had the opportunity to be creative and count as well!
We had a sensory "snow" center that was fun and smelled pretty great, too.
We even practiced our letters in the snow.
When it was time to switch Ms. Angela would say "hands up!"
We had "P" show and tell...I'm not sure you've seen this before, but I have a microphone we use sometimes when we're speaking. Here, one of the peas is using it to introduce his "P" show and tell item. (It doesn't really work, but it's super cute watching them use it!)
Later, when we did letter O, we gave Pre-K 1 a challenge. The challenge was to think of as many double o words as possible. The peas love anything with the word "challenge" attached to it! They took it VERY seriously!
All throughout the day they would return to the board to add words. We didn't give them words, but we did help them spell some of the words if they asked. We also gave them clues by reminding them that many words that rhymed would be spelled similar. Check out how many words these 4 & 5 year olds came up with! They blow me away!
Pre-K 2 got busy making snowmen next door.
Super cute guys!
They made winter trees, too by rolling a marble in white paint.
Next, both classes read this book:
It is a very heartwarming story about kindness and a sense of community. We made our own mittens and cut them out.
During the midst of this week we had hat day. How cute are these peas?
I made a tree for them to hang their mittens on!
Everyone worked together to get the tree finished.
Then we hung it up and put the finishing touches on.
We also did a color sight word coloring sheet and they did GREAT at it! Those sight words are coming along!
Pre-K 2 made name snowmen. I love these guys.
Also, we opened the igloo for reading. But as most of you know, it collapsed in the front. I used it as an opportunity to explain that things don't always work out the way we plan. Sometimes we have to start over. I'm glad to report that although it looks a little wonky, the igloo is fixed and ready to be inhabited again!
Another fun activity we did about mittens was with the 3 Little Kittens. We read the Nursery Rhyme and discussed it. We talked about a time when we had lost something.
After reading the story, we broke up into groups and drew pictures of what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the story. They even added words.
Each group came up and added their part to the mitten.
Here's the finished product.
When we were done, I used an ipad to look up a 3 Little Kitten song to celebrate our hard work. We found this one. We thought the pies look like waffles, but the song still works!
To round out our mitten fun, we measured with mittens, matched and hung mittens on a line.
They loved hanging the mittens up and I loved all that fine motor practice.
Each group took turns measuring their friends. This one was 5 mittens long!
Then we added how many mittens long we were so we could compare.
That wraps up our mitten and snow weeks. Hopefully as we continue into February we won't still need our mittens! Stay tuned as I catch up on our Cooking Week and Space weeks!
