Snowmen!

We've been knee deep in all things winter the past few weeks in kindergarten! When we went back to school, the weather was miserably cold here, so the kids really got to feel what winter is. Even though snow is rare for us, we still love incorporating snow and snowmen in our winter learning!
We started by reading Snowmen at Night {always a favorite!}. Then, we made snowmen to the way we thought they would if they had spent the night having fun and wrote about what our snowmen would do.

We also talked about snowmen in general and what my kids thought about them then made these torn paper snowmen that I love! {You can see the original idea at The Elementary Art Room}

We also read Sneezy the Snowman and talked about things that are good for snowmen and things that aren't good for a snowman. We attached our writing to these snowmen that I *very* quickly threw together {they aren't great, but the kids loved them!}.

In math, we also used snowmen to help us learn about non-standard measurement and measurement vocabulary. We each compared ourselves to our class snowman to see if we were the same height, shorter, or taller. This really helped the kids with the vocabulary as so many of them started by wanting to say that they were "bigger."

 Then, we talked about how we can use items in our classroom to measure objects. We started by measuring an alphabet chart with cubes, then we painted snowmen and measured to see how many cubes long they were. I was amazed at how well my kids did with making sure the cubes were lined up with the top or bottom of the snowman since this was our first time working with measuring on our own.

 Another area we worked on in math was graphing. I really try to do one graph at least every 2 weeks. We graphed whether we liked winter or not and before we did our data sheets, I had the kids talk with their partner about the data on our graph. Then, I wrote some of what they notice. I've really worked hard this year to do this with every graph - instead of just asking questions like, "Which was the most/least, etc." I have the kids generate thoughts about the data. Then, we filled in our individual data sheets. I love the sheet that says "The data didn't get all the way to the top!"  {This is part of my winter pack}

And on a completely different note, like many other classes, we made our New Year's resolutions. One of my sweeties has a brother in 3rd grade and apparantly, they're working on multiplication because she and some of her friends decided to resolve to learn their times tables! I was rolling!

Next week, we're moving on to penguins and I'm so excited! The kids really start loving informational text with that unit! Have a great weekend friends!