We did lots of learning with the help of snowmen this week. Here is a brace map we completed after reading an emergent reader about a snowman.
Here are a few student samples. I have such wonderful artists!
We've been working with the poem Five Little Snowmen in Math. We focused on ordinal numbers first-fifth. We made a flip book to practice counting, identifying, and writing those. ordinal numbers.
We've also been working with pattern block shapes. We used them to make a pattern for a snowman's scarf (from Julie Lee's blog) http://mrsleeskinderkids.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-01-22T21%3A33%3A00-06%3A00&max-results=10)
We read There Was A Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow and created a flow map to help us retell the story. Swallowing snow did not sound too strange-we've all done that, but in true Old Lady fashion she went a little crazy after that.
We've been working a lot with story elements (characters, setting, problem, and solution). We read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats and created a map for Peter. We listed all of the things Peter did in the story. Then, we used this map to make text-self connections. We looked for ways we could connect to Peter and wrote about them.
We learned a lot about snow and ice during this unit. We talked about how snow/ice is water in a solid form. We talked about how snow/ice can change. We all already knew that snow/ice melt when heat is applied. We did a little experiment to see who could devise a plan to melt ice the fastest. The students were given one ice cube in a zip-loc bag. They could use anything I had in the room to try to melt their cube. We stated our question and recorded our hypothesis. Next, we tried them out and recorded our observations. The kids had some great ideas. Some tried to hold their ice cube under the light, some sat on them, a few laid down on them, several kept stepping on them. We clarified the difference between breaking the ice cube into small pieces and actually changing the state of the ice cube from solid to liquid (water). One student went over the the sink and added warm water to her bag, and her cube melted first. We made some predictions as to why that worked the quickest. We also learned how we can generate heat with our hands and breathe. We tried those new techniques to melt the rest of the ice cubes. We made pictures of snowmen melting under the warmth of the sun (got this idea from Chalk Talk).
To finish out the week we made a melting snowman snack!
We learned a lot about snow and ice during this unit. We talked about how snow/ice is water in a solid form. We talked about how snow/ice can change. We all already knew that snow/ice melt when heat is applied. We did a little experiment to see who could devise a plan to melt ice the fastest. The students were given one ice cube in a zip-loc bag. They could use anything I had in the room to try to melt their cube. We stated our question and recorded our hypothesis. Next, we tried them out and recorded our observations. The kids had some great ideas. Some tried to hold their ice cube under the light, some sat on them, a few laid down on them, several kept stepping on them. We clarified the difference between breaking the ice cube into small pieces and actually changing the state of the ice cube from solid to liquid (water). One student went over the the sink and added warm water to her bag, and her cube melted first. We made some predictions as to why that worked the quickest. We also learned how we can generate heat with our hands and breathe. We tried those new techniques to melt the rest of the ice cubes. We made pictures of snowmen melting under the warmth of the sun (got this idea from Chalk Talk).
To finish out the week we made a melting snowman snack!
Next week we will be learning about how animals handle winter changes.
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