Let it snow!

I don't teach thematically due to the demands of our curriculum, but I do try to slip in seasonal items when I can.  So this post shows some of the winter seasonal themed item items we have been working on in our classroom.

Today we read a book that was new to me "The Missing Mitten Mystery"  by Steven Kellogg.  What a cute story!  The kids giggled all the way through.  I bet some future snowman built outside this winter will have a mitten for a heart :)

Afterward, we created TLC snowmen. 

The lesson is from TLC art. The website is here: http://www.tlclessons.com  I can't remember if this was a free lesson or if it is in the winter book.  There are lots of free art lessons on the website, so if you haven't heard of it, check it out.  I like that they all turn out a little bit different.  I had the kids add the mitten as a heart if they wanted to go with the story.

I like that these lessons teach basic skills such as shapes, colors, and position words, but I especially like the focus on following directions!  It seems like we have been struggling with this a lot lately.  On the end of the year GATES testing, it seems like the kids who have the most trouble listening and following directions do the worst on the test, so I think that practicing and having to do tasks where the kids have to listen and follow directions is important.

I also made a bulletin board of all the snowmen.

Here is the sign I made for the bulletin board, but I couldn't get it to print for some reason.  I will have to ask Other Awesome Kindergarten Teacher to help me as she is our building technology leader .

I love walking down the hallway and seeing all the great, creative, colorful ideas that the other awesome teachers in our building have!  Here are a few:

This is a board made by our Wrap around teachers.  We have half-day kindergarten at our building with an optional free enrichment program for the other half that we call "Wrap-around".  Here is a close up of one of the snowflakes on the board made by one of my students.

Aren't they cute.  I think parents would love to use this as a Christmas ornament.  I love to pull out the ornaments that my kids make every year to put on the tree.

Here is a board of snowman that the kids made in art class with their Awesome Art Teacher:

Here is a close up of one made by one of my students:

Here is some cute computer games we have looked at the last couple of weeks:

This is a fun little game called KTuberling.  It has three screens, a potato head, the penguin, and a fishbowl.  I use the potato head at the beginning of the year, the penguin game now, and the fishbowl when we have some ocean themed stories at the end of the year.  It is freeware and the school district loaded it on to computers when we got them.  Here is the link to download Ktuberling

We also looked at 10 Little Snowmen on good 'ole Starfall.  The link to this game is: http://www.starfall.com/n/holiday/snowman/load.htm?f&n=main

Here are some snow themed items that were incorporated into our literacy centers.

This is a game I got from Shelly Lovett's free printables.  Awesome Parapro did this game with a few of the kids who need to work on letters and sounds.  Here is the website for Shelly's free printables:
Childcare Land Free Printables

Here are some of things that have been incorporated in letter and word work:

Sight word puzzles from Shelly Lovett  http://www.childcareland.com/free.html

Winter friends uppercase/lowercase match from Shelly Lovett  http://www.childcareland.com/free.html

Hat/Mitten match from Shelly Lovett  http://www.childcareland.com/free.html

Mitten Match from Evan Moore.  I inherited this from a teacher that retired.

As always I appreciate you comments and thoughts.

Sarah :)