The cold continues....

Alberta is in a deep freeze.  Students are staying inside and are going

just a little stir crazy.  What's the best way to combat the 'inside blues'?

The best way is to keep all of the lessons exciting and different!

(and focused on enjoying the cold, winter snow!)

Dream Snow by Eric Carle is a fun book.  The students were introduced

to the idea of clues.  Within the first 2 pages, they had to use the

illustrations to figure out what the five animals in the barn could be.

As the story goes on, the animals are covered up with snow, so

there is an opportunity to guess which animal is under the snow mound.

At this time of the year, you will notice less 'perfect' spelling.

That is because the students are not always just copying the words

as I have written them on the SMARTBoard.  Instead, they are 

using the words that we have been working on (sight words) along

with the sound that they know and are attempting to print the words

on their own.  This doesn't mean that I don't help.  It does mean that I

have them work on finding words in their mind, and within the room.

There is almost always a list of words that the students have generated written 

on the SMARTBoard as well.

They each chose an animal that lives on the farm, which could have been

one of the five from the book along with about 5 others that were discussed.

Each wrote 3 clues which had to use these sentence starters:

I have....

I can.....

I live......

Their clues were displayed along with the three clues.  What's behind the 

painted snow mounds?  If you read these clues could you guess?

I have hay.

I can run.

I live in sep.

(sometimes the words are a bit muddled!)

I have hair.

I can run.

I live in barn.

(learning to read the words again to make sure they make sense

 is on our list of things to do!)

I have a tail.

I can chase sheep.

I live in a barn.

(Which one did you get?)

The Snowy Day is a classic and a Caldecott winner.  It tells

the story of Peter and his exploration of snow in his city neighbourhood.

There were a variety of activities that were completed but by far

the favourite one was creating the setting for one of Peter's

adventures in the snow.

The children so enjoyed moving the puffy snow mixture around

to create one of the scenes from the story.

The best part is that the puffy snow paint dries puffy so that the adventure

is captured in 3D!