Monday, January 18, 2010

Winter Wonderland of Ideas

Brrr....it's snowy and cold in many parts of the country, but you can warm your students' imaginations with these fun ideas.
Snowmen are a great way to start.  You can use 3-ball snowmen to review common nouns.  Use the template below to have the students cut out the snowman parts.  Each child thinks of a person, place, and a thing.  Glue the snowmen on to blue backgrounds and use chalk to create a snowy scene.  Make a cute noun bulletin board.  As an extension, have the children pick a different snowman and write sentences about the nouns on that snowman.
noun snowman

Of course there are lots of wonderful wintery books out there that can be used for reading and language arts.  Two of my favorites are The Mitten and The Hat by Jan Brett.  Jan Brett's website is full of fantastic activities and printables for teachers.  Check out her website below:
The Mitten by Jan Brett
The Hat by Jan Brett

Have your students make a Venn Diagram to compare the two books.  For my first graders I make it cute-sy by having having them overlap a mitten shape with a hat shape.  Compare and contrast the two stories.
Comparing The Hat & The Mitten Stories

Another fun activity is to practice story sequence by having your students cut out 3 mittens (or hats) and write or draw what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story.