Winter Fun {Penguin Style}

Hello four day weekend! We are out on another snow day today. We managed to get in four school days this week after being out for Christmas break for two weeks and then missing a week after that for snow/cold days. We got busy right away learning all about penguins.

 

They completed a little penguin writing to go along with their penguin craft to the prompt "If I were a Penguin..." Here were some of the popular go-to activities my sweeties would do if they were penguins..... dive, swim, eat fish, dance, sing, be happy :), slide on their bellies, and wobble/waddle! :) I love it! The penguin is from my It's a Winter Wonderland of Fun pack.

I finally changed the paper on my bulletin board in the hallway! It's been the same blue for what seems like forever!! I decided to go with pink.... since Valentine's Day is knocking at our door. 

This week we focused on verbs. After reading a ton of non-fiction books about penguins, we made a chart with penguin verbs. One of my little sweeties said "wow, penguins sure are full of action!" ha 

Some of them gave me phrases like "wear a tuxedo." So I circled the wear and we discussed how wear was the verb and not the "a tuxedo" part.

Next up is my trusty ole Penguin chart. I made this three-ish years ago after seeing it on Cara's blog. It's been a good one... but it's beginning to look pretty rough when you get up close to it. ha

 

We used our Scholastic News about penguins to hunt for verbs. Students hunted for verbs and highlighted them. I got this idea from Amy Lemons. She did this one time with Turtles. :)

While off on snow days last week I ran across this super cute snazzy snack idea on Pinterest. The link didn't take me to a site though... just to a pic of it. Not sure who it belongs to but it's adorable!! My kiddos were going to make this delicious and oh so cute little snack today... but I guess it will have to wait until Tuesday. Can't wait!

Here is a picture of the penguin snack we have made the last couple of years. We love snazzy snacks!

Non-penguin related.... but this is something else we did with verbs. I gave each student a post-it and they wrote down a verb and illustrated it. Some examples of what I got jump, run, tapping, singing, sleep, etc.

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Last year I purchased this precious pack from The Teacher Wife but never got around to using it. Monday morning when I got to school I pulled this bad boy out and headed straight to the copier. We worked with this pack all week. My kids LOVED it! They were so excited and into the lesson. Such a fun pack!

I did it just a little differently than the pack calls for simply because I wanted to carry this on through this week and into the next week. First up we went over the four steps of solving a story problem. 

Then I gave them all a copy of the recording sheet. Rather than playing the game {love this idea though!} we met on the rug with our recording sheets and I let a student come up and pick a snowball. The student read the story problem on the snowball and then went through the remaining steps to show us how they would solve it. We did this with a couple of students and then I let one come up and pick out a snowball and read it to the class. Then they all went through the steps to solve and find the answer on the recording sheet. Then I had the little sweetie come back up and show us how to solve it and students checked their work to see if they agreed with the student and if they were correct. Then students went back and completed one of the story problems sheets included in this problem on their own. We did this like this each day. Students held onto their recording sheets and would bring it back to the rug each day to complete a new one. Yesterday we filled up our recording sheets and turned them. Next week, I plan on letting them do the group work activity that is included in this pack. If you don't have this, it's a must have! Such a fun way to do math in the wintertime.

Well that's a wrap! Happy Friday!