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!!

   

"Snow" much fun with Math!!

   Well, I wish I could say Happy Monday, but it hasn’t all been wonderful. Don’t get me wrong, nothing horrible happened, it was just, well… a Monday!

   The rain and weird weather has melted away all our snow and my whole body and mind are confused!!  Is it winter or not??

   But, that hasn’t stopped the winter learning fun. We have done a lot of different activities related to snow—you know, the usual stuff—The Snowy day, snowflake paintings, snowman names, etc.

   But today the munchkins embarked on some math fun!

   During circle time, I started teaching Estimation and had the kids guess how many “snow balls” they thought were in the jar. My aide and I will be encouraging them to write their guess on a sheet of paper throughout the week.

   We had two different math center activities going on today!

   

   We worked on our counting skills with cotton balls and ice cube trays. They each took a turn and played together, to see who could fill up their tray first.

   

   I have seen different Roll & Write activities for different skills, but I decided to make my own version to help my munchkins practice writing numbers.

    Since my focus this week is to have them identify and write numbers,  I took some little foam cubes I bought awhile back at the Dollar Tree, wrote numbers on the cubes and used them as dice. They rolled the cube, identified the number and then chose a box to write it in. And they continued to do this until all 6 boxes were full.

They really enjoyed this activity and as they were engaged in the activity, I thought of a few other ways to use this activity sheet.

   Later this week, I plan on using cotton balls and an ice cream scooper and have them scoop out “snow balls”, count them and then write the number1

   That’s all I have for tonight… Time to get to bed and get recharged for tomorrow….

Don’t forget about my 

Fabulous 50 Giveaway
going on now! 

Enter every day until Friday!

Yay!! 50 followers!! AND some 'snow dough" and other wintery fun!

Yea!! I FINALLY reached        50 followers!!

   Plans are now in the works for my very 1^st GIVEAWAY!!  I have been waiting SOOO long for this…now to figure out HOW to host a giveaway! 

   

 Look! Even my newly adopted fur baby, Brooklyn (my Christmas present) was even impressed that I finally reached 5o followers! 

Well. guess I better get to planning!! Anyone willing to offer tips or advice?!

 Come back and visit this Saturday for more details!  =)

   Anyhow, I am cannot believe that I have survived this week so far!
   This week, 2 of our busiest kiddos returned to school and wow… all I can say is ---I don’t know how I do it sometimes!  But somehow, my one aide and I have managed to make it through each day…Although the two of us are awesome together, I really do miss the dynamic that is present when the three of us are all present in the classroom.

   On a lighter note, my little munchkin and I have gotten back into the swing of things with our fun learning at home!

   This past weekend, she really gave me a hard time when it came to nap time! On Saturday, she refused to take a nap. So rather than lose my mind over it, I gave her a quiet activity to do. I have been wanting to make cloud dough for some time now, and I finally got around to it! Except I told her we were going to make some “SNOW”! I recommend it to all moms of young children!!
   Just take some simple everyday ingredients and you will get a whole lotta quiet and fun sensory play!

Ingredients are:

-8 cups of flour

-1 cup of baby oil (I substituted it with vegetable cooking oil b/c it is all that I had available—works the exact same)

   She helped me make it and then sat there for at least 3o minutes just running her hands through it… then asked for her My Little Pony toys to play with in her 'snow'

    Then on Sunday, we did some marble painting and made a winter snow scene!

  

   Regardless of all the indoor fun, nothing beats all the snow fun we had outdoors!

   Don't forget to stop and visit on Saturday to participate in my 1st Giveaway!