Is there a thin line between love & hate for snow days?

  Oh, snow days how I love thee. But enough already...ok?

  I wonder if there is a thin line between love & hate when it comes to snow days? Sure, I know kids love them. But how do adults feel?

   I think alot of people can honestly say that they are going a little stir crazy today... I know I am! The kids and I have been holed up in the house since Monday afternoon. It has been far too cold (in Buffalo) to leave the house and I admit, it is starting to get to me and I can tell it is driving my muchkin a little mad. The routine is all messed up and meltdowns (from the little munchkin) are happening throughout the day!

  The one good thing about snow days is that it allows me extra time with the kiddos. And I have been able to get the learning fun back on track after the long holiday break.
   But I will be glad when the kids are back in school tomorrow... they need the structure and routine back... and I need to get a handle on my own sanity!  =)

   Anyhow, over the winter break when I had some downtime, I did some searching on TPT, and I have found yet another favorite seller: Lavinia Pop. She has some awesome packets. I purchased a few of her Winter (math & literacy) packets to use with my daughter throughout the month of January.

     I put together a  little January Work binder for the munchkin and she will pick and choose a few activities that she wants to complete during our random "work times" or at any given time during the week.     

                  

    When school started up in September, I chose not to have an established work time, simply because some days she was too tired after school and other days, all she wanted to do was work. So, now we just go with the flow. I think it will be easier to have worksheets like these on hand along with other manipulatives to complete them, (rather than just pencils and crayons), so they are ready when she wants them.

     Today it felt right to read a few winter books and focus on some winter vocabulary. And this pack (also by Lavinia Pop) came in handy.

    We chose 10 Winter Words to put in our pocket chart. 

                   

    We reviewed each word, focusing on the beginning sound. I then cut out the pictures of the words she chose and she glued each picture and copied each word onto the pages of her Winter Words book.

                

She was very excited to "read" her Winter Words book when she was done!

  And of course, she had to make a snowman! I came to notice that she was bringing home alot of artwork from school, and a huge chunk of it was simple shapes that the children may or may not have cut out themselves and glued together-- not very much process art. I mean, I can understand why preschool teachers would have children do art this way; I have done it myself at times.
   But for the sake of art variety, I am going to continue to focus on providing the little munchkin with somewhat open-ended process art activities at home. Plus, I love to see what children's imaginations create in art, especially hers!

   So here is the process art snowman she made: 

   She was ectastic when my son and I joined in on the art activity. (And later told daddy he needed to make one!)

   And the snack of the day was..... Donut Snowman!!

   Well, the snow days have been fun. But now it is time to get the kiddos back into school and get that routine started up again! I just hope there are no more crazy snowstorms in the near future that would cause everyhing to shut down again! 

    BUT-- I am in Buffalo, so ya never know!!

   

Green Eggs & Ham, Anyone?

  “Would you, like them in a house? Or would you like them with a mouse?”

   I love Green Eggs & Ham! Such a fun book that my kiddos loved!

   We had a parent come in to read this book  and the kids were thrilled to hear someone else read- other than myself or my assistants!

   I actually struggled with thinking of a fun activity linked to this book that I felt the kids would really enjoy.  

   When my assistant and I put our brains together, we came up with a way to use this cool solution that we have in our art closet. We have a paint product called Bio-Color that can be used in many ways! We have used it to create water colors (using one type of solution) and then have used it to create a gooey putty like substance, using a different solution.

   So we decided to make a green egg!

   We put a few drops of green paint into a bowl of solution and they mixed it up until they had a putty like substance. Then they had a blast playing with it and slapping it onto an egg yolk shape!

   During gym time, we worked on balancing skills, as each child had a turn in balancing plastic green (and yellow) eggs on a plastic spoon. It was funny to see them so concentrated and focused on not dropping the eggs!

 And for snack, we had green pudding with vanilla wafers. We poured the pudding onto a plate and then stuck a wafer in the middle to make a Green Egg! (Sorry, no ham here!) 

    I can tell that the kids are having such a fun time learning about Dr. Seuss and the classroom library has been a popular place this week, as they have been exploring all the books I have put out for them!

   Tomorrow I will share some of the other books and activities that we have read and done this week!

   But right now, I need to go raid my closet and put together a wacky outfit for our Wacky Friday fun! I can't wait to see what kinds of wacky outfits the kids come to school in! 

Happy Early Spring!! (So Phil says!)

Happy Groundhog Day!

   So I am usually not very excited about Groundhog Day, especially since there is a ton of snow on the ground this morning and more headed our way… BUT I was up at 7am. to watch Punxsutawney Phil determine the weather for the next 6 weeks!

   And YAY!! He did not see his shadow, so if he is right then Spring will arrive early!!  J

   I touched on Groundhog Day briefly with my preschoolers yesterday and I loved how they were all eyes and ears as I introduced them to my friend Mr. Groundhog.

   I read the book “Go To Sleep, Groundhog!” by Judy Cox and told them all about the tradition/folklore of Groundhog Day. 

   And then I used this little graphing set from Over The Moon Bow

 (Click the link or picture for your own copy) 

   I asked “Do You Think The Groundhog Will See His Shadow?” and had each one of them make a prediction and contribute to our class graph by placing their prediction (YES or NO) in the right column!

   And this morning, my own little munchkin crawled out of bed just before 7:15am, just in time to sit with me and watch it all on tv.

   After breakfast, we went right to work on learning more about Groundhogs. Scholastic has a Groundhog Weekly Reader and we took a look at the hard copy and read it online too. Then we watched a cool video about Groundhogs.

Check it out here.

(I am a subscriber, but I think you can still have access to the reader as well!)

   She worked on some printables offered by Scholastic as well.

(Here she is again in her Spiderman pjs! Those are her pjs of choice on the weekends! Which is good b/c if she wore them during the week, I am sure I would be in big trouble b/c she wouldn’t want to take them off!)

   Anyhow, we worked on comprehension, with Mr. Groundhog by her side! I read a sentence strip, she chose the picture that it belonged to.

   She practiced cutting as she matched objects and their shadows-- an activity sheet that I found in my collection of Mailbox magazines.

    And of course we had to make a cute little Groundhog Craft!

   Here is her Groundhog peeking out of his burrow!

   AND we are going to have THIS Groundhog Snack later today! YUM!

   

"Pumpkin Palooza!"

    My thoughts and prayers go out to all those who have been directly affected by Hurricane Sandy. Here in Buffalo, we are feeling some effects, like rain and high winds. School closed today because of flooding and power outage concerns.

    So that gives me time to post a few things that my little munchkin and I have been doing.

    We have been having lots of fun with our own little “Pumpkin Palooza”!

    “Pumpkin Palooza” started last weekend, when we took a trip to the Great Pumpkin Farm! It turned out to be a perfect Pumpkin Picking Day!

      It was tons of fun and we ended coming home with quite a few pumpkins, in many different "small" sizes:
   Anyhow, on another note, I have been researching and learning about Five and Ten Frames and have been trying to find a way to introduce it with my little one and eventually, in my classroom.

To make things simple, I decided to begin with smaller concept of Five Frame.

    I created these Pumpkin Five Frame mats (and found the candy corn mats on TpT) to introduce my little munchkin to the concept. Of course I had to make it fun and used candy corn and candy pumpkins!

    I started by just having her counting candy pumpkins on each mat , then moved along to simple adding problems, such as “If you have 2 pumpkins and I gave you 3 more, how many would you have?” So we started with the math strip with 2 dots and I had her add 3 more pumpkins onto it and count the total.

 Then we moved on to Candy Corn Ten Frame. I found these mats in a Candy Corn Math unit (freebie), at Oceans of First Grade Fun. It’s geared towards 1^st grade, but very adaptable for lower grades too. Make sure to stop by and pick up a free copy and have some fun counting candy corn!

    The part she liked the best was when she was able to fill up the mats and then was able to eat them all up! (Well, not ALL of them!)

    

     And then we made Pumpkin Pudding!!

Ingredients:

One can of Canned Pumpkin (I used a little more than half of the can)

One Box of Vanilla Pudding

Cinnamon/Sugar

Vanilla wafers or even Graham Crackers

YUMMMMM!!  Deliciousness!