"Snow" Fun!

This morning the students practiced writing words and drawing pictures in "snow" (otherwise known as shaving cream). The students love playing in shaving cream and it is a great tool to keep students engaged. We use shaving cream for many purposes such as writing word wall words, drawing sticks and dots for place value practice, writing addition and subtraction sentences to word problems, etc.

Christmas Light Addition

To help the students practice addition and to have a little painting fun, the students used Do-A-Dot Paints to create Christmas lights in two colors. They then counted how many of each color they used to create their lights and wrote corresponding number sentences with labels. We have been working on using labels when answer addition and subtraction word problems.

The Snowman

We watched the dvd version of The Snowman by Raymond Briggs. After watching the students verbally identified the characters, setting, problem, and solution. The students then created their own snowmen.

Gingerbread Subtraction

On Wednesday we reviewed subtraction problems by using Gingerbread mashmallows followed by a fun word problem lesson created by my teammate, Mrs. Timms. The students placed however many gingerbread clipart on a cookie sheet that they wanted. (My teammate used foil which was so cute - too bad I forgot mine at home that day!) They then pretended that some of them fell off of the cookie sheet and glued them all down. They then solved a subtraction word problem by identifying how many gingerbread men were on the cookie sheet to begin with, how many fell off, and how many were left on the cookie sheet. And, of course, the students then ate their gingerbread marshmallows. Yum!

Christmas Tree Addition

In the computer lab yesterday the students drew their own trees in the program Pixie 2. They practiced the skill of "click, hold, and drag" to create three overlapping triangles. They then learned to fill in the shapes with the paint bucket feature. For each new section in their tree they had to choose a new shade of green and a new texture background. After their tree was created, they again practiced "click, hold, and drag" to make circle ornaments and filled them with either blue or red. They then typed an addition word problem from the board with their specific number of ornaments. They then solved their addition problems. Lastly, they practiced using the search feature in the clipart, or stickers, section of Pixie 2 to find a star to place on top of their tree. I love the different shapes and sizes of their trees!

My Elf Self

The students created an elf on Monday using the pattern from Deanna Jump's Polar Express unit. Fellow teachers, if you have not seen it, you should check it out! I then took a black and white photo of the students and cut out their face. The students then wrote about what their elf looks like, what he or she is wearing, and what he or she can do using our Write From the Beginning strategies. They turned out really adorable!

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Holidays Around the World: Germany

As a part of our unit on holidays around the world, we read and then sang "O Christmas Tree" with the book version by Debbie Trafton O'Neal and read The Legend of the Christmas Tree by Pat Matuszak. We discussed the how the tradition of the Christmas tree began and how the tradition of using candles at Christmas time began. The students then created their own tree out of hearts (we reviewed number patterns as we created them - the numbers decreased by one with each layer). The students then added a heart and yellow hole punches to decorate their tree. They then drew lines under the yellow hole punches to turn them into candles to symbolizes that candles were once placed on Christmas trees in Germany.

Holidays Around The World: Mexico

As a part of our Social Studies unit on holidays around the world, we read The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola. We talked about how poinsettias are thought to have first appeared when a child, having nothing else to offer, left green weeds at the nativity which then turned red. The students then created poinsettias of their own. (Fellow teachers, I did not take a picture of these but we just layered the a five-pointed flower shape three times - twice in red and once in green. We then added yellow hole punches to the center.)