Winter Wonderland in the Classroom

As much as I don't care for winter, there is something to be said about the magic of snow. It's so enticing to kids that it's the perfect theme to integrate into that classroom that is sure to engage and excite your students. I've shared some of my favorite winter activities! 

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Lucky for me, Air and Weather is one of our NGSS aligned science units of study. I supplement our curriculum with my absolute favorite nonfiction snow text. It includes content specific vocabulary and opportunities for cross-curricular integration. There is so much math behind how a snowflake is formed- I love every page of this book.

You can find it on Amazon here.  

This is the anchor chart that I use each year to record our key details as we read the text. I've laminated it and only write on the post-its. How perfect are those star shaped post-its that kind of look like snowflakes?! 

These are also on the top of my list for nonfiction books about snow. 

Snow is Falling                                                           Curious About Snow

You can find it here.                                                     You can find it here. 

If your science unit focuses on Solids, Liquids and Gases and you integrate snow- this is the perfect nonfiction text!

You can find it here. 

In attempt to make this hand on, there are so many phenomenal resources for you to make your own snow. Each year, I've done things a little different. I once used a snow making kit where I just added water. Then students placed a handful of "snow" on a black piece of construction paper and explored what they saw. 

You can find a "just add water" kit on Amazon here for a great price!

 

This year I had my kiddos make snow slime! It was ALL the rage and this time, they were able to take it home with them. I found the recipe on a blog over on Pinterest. You can find it on my board here! I've included the ingredients below. 

SNOW SLIME

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2 bottles clear Elmer' s Glue (we substituted with white)

1 bottle white Elmer's glue

(*Substitute Elmer's gallon size if using for complete class) 

Glitter

Foil Snowflakes

Confetti (In store at Michaels)

Liquid Starch

Mason Jars or 4 oz. Glad containers

Last year we made "snow paint" with shaving cream and Elmer's glue. I wish I had a recipe to give you but I totally winged it- ha! This was such a blast too. We accompanied it with this super cute and fun activity from The Primary Pack. You can find this printable here and blue paper here. 

It's perfectly paired with the book Sneezy the Snowman, which you can find here.



Another favorite is this snowy classic by Lyndsey Kuster from a Year of Many Firsts. I'm sure you've seen them all over Instagram and Pinterest and thought I have to do this too!!! She is the genius behind this precious creation and you can find the templates FREE here!

In years past I used liquid glue and had students create snowflakes to sprinkle with glitter. After reading my good friend Maria's post on this craftivity, she shared how she uses her favorite adhesive spray and snow glitter. The snow glitter is thicker, fluffier and truly adds texture. In order to truly let these shine, I made this slight adjustment and couldn't be more pleased with how they turned out. I keep them up for weeks!

While Maria uses the Scotch 3m multi-purpose adhesive spray, I found the Elmer's adhesive spray for a great price. I used one bottle last year (with plenty left over for this year) and it had perfect coverage!

You can find the Elmer's Glue adhesive spray here. This snow glitter is perfect for all your winter needs. You can find it here!

Another way to integrate snow into the classroom is with this adorable snowflake addition craftivity! It's the perfect way to review so many skills including double digit addition and describing your thinking. Students used number models such as tens frames, number lines and number sentences to show their thinking. It was also easily differentiated- you can have students choose their numbers or you can "suggest" numbers for each individual students. Last year I did a combination of both.



I saw this on Cara's blog over at The First Grade Parade after she saw it on another blog and added her little spin. Fortunately, Johanna from First Grade Fanatic created a black line master template!! Woohooo, thank you Johanna for saving us so much time! You can find it here.





Another quick tip! I love to have name labels printed for my crafts. I have a master copy on paper that I keep in the labels envelope. I copy the master on the labels as needed. You can find the labels here.

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Nonfiction is Snow Much Fun!

It's finally starting to feel like winter around these parts. Anyone else have their AC on for Christmas? I don't know about you, but in New Jersey that has never been a thing. The cold came just in time for our nonfiction winter fun! Both our January reader's workshop and writer's workshop units focus on nonfiction, which makes me feel as if all the stars are aligned. :) To me, it is most meaningful to make the connection between the two so that our students can see themselves as readers and writers- together as one. 

I always introduce a unit with immersion lessons- which is just that in itself. We "immerse" ourselves in unit together as a class. For this unit, it looked like me guiding the class towards exploring nonfiction reading and writing by engaging the class in numerous read alouds. I use this time to model my thinking about how and why we read nonfiction. We made the white anchor chart for the first immersion lesson. The second focused on "what types on nonfiction texts can we read? " This was lesson a personal favorite! It was so exciting exploring magazines, menus, flyers, recipes, etc. Then we took the time to explore the library together as a class to hunt for some nonfiction books and book bins. This is something we do in the beginning of the year but can be beneficial to do again as a refresher... especially after they had a few months to explore on their own. After, I told them that they could now have 3/4 dessert books in their book bins since our just right readers are predominantly fiction texts. They went CRAZY and book shopped until they dropped. :) When I'm telling you there were at least 10 readers in the library, with their arms tangles, hands lost in book bins and you could hear a pin drop... I'm not lying!

My mini-lessons have now been focusing on nonfiction text-features, about 2 or 3 a day. I model my thinking about what they are and how they can be used by reading nonfiction books about penguins that I had read during our immersion lessons. We record our thinking each day on the reading nonfiction anchor chart. Last year I created a nonfiction text feature anchor chart by coping pages from the nonfiction penguin books I was reading and referring to in my mini lesson. I place star post-it notes next to the text features we are learning that day. I found this helped students learn the language of text features. 

I draw a link between reader's and writer's workshop by immersing the class in writing a nonfiction book about Penguins. First we discuss the concept of main topic and subtopics. I engage the class by telling them our main topic is winter animals. Then I passed our post it notes and had the class list subtopics (aka examples of winter animals). Next we brought our post it to the front white board and built a web with the subtopics. This allows the students to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between main topics and subtopics. Our class selected penguins as our subtopic to write about.

Luckily and *coincidentally* ;) we had all these facts we knew about penguins (from reader's workshop). Our second immersion was listing facts we new about penguins on the penguin anchor chart and organizing them in categories. Next we took the time to think about the categories and created headings in a table of contents, correlating to the categories. This week we will continue by looking at the list of facts in the categories and re-write them into complete sentences. I did my best to plan by aligning what nonfiction text feature I was teaching in reader's that day and then adding that feature to our nonfiction book. For example teaching diagrams and writing a diagram. 

Our writer's workshop nonfiction unit is a two month unit. Therefore, the first month each student writes their own version of a nonfiction book about penguins. Next month, after having done one book together, the students will choose a topic of their choice and write one on their own. From experience, this worked really well because the kiddos had more schema on the writing process and could thus focus on their research. I'm hoping to team up with a second grade class in our school that just learned how to *safely* research on chrome books to help my kiddos list gather on their topics. For those of you who are fortunate enough to have access to technology, I head Google Jr. is a safe search engine for kids! Next year my first grade team will hopefully have a class set of chrome books to share!  After this unit, we will have a big Author's Celebration by inviting parents in to come and read our books.

Raise your hand if you support cross-curricular integration? *Insert girl raising her hand emoji here.* :) It is AWESOME-SAUCE! I love to kick off a science unit by engaging my students in some real world topics. Our next unit is on solids and liquids. What better way to engage students and build schema than with an exploration on the science of snow?

First we read one of my favorite science texts, The Story of Snow, which integrates math, science and nonfiction. It tells the story of how a snowflake is formed. Last year I just happened to read this on a day that it was snowing in school and we were getting let out early- it was magical! One of my kiddos from last year even went home, got a snowflake and put it under a microscope. Somehow he was even able to take a digital picture of it to share with the class. SO COOL!!!!!!!!! 

The next day we got all hands on deck and explored water and ice. We compared on contrasted our findings and listed them in the chart below.  (Please don't judge my seven pointed snowflake- I know it's supposed to have 6 but I made a boo-boo ha!) We were lucky to have some Scholastic News articles on Penguins and Winter States of Matter this month.  This added more schema, had great videos and even review games on various nonfiction text features.

 We used nonfiction mini readers and articles found in the Snow Nonfiction Pack from the fabulous A Year of Many Firsts, to focus on vocabulary words for this unit. 

Last, I had to pull out the big guns! I surprised the kiddos by saying it was going to snow in room A-14. Hoping and praying that it would work- we modeled the formation of a snowflake in small groups by creating snow!!!!! By far one of my favorite science experiments. I used a kit from Scholastic. You can get it here!  

This nonfiction stuff is seriously SNOW much fun!!!! :) In the beginning of the year I always touch upon nonfiction but it doesn't seem to "stick" like it does now. They realize that by reading it, they turn into smartie pants' because they are learning new facts! 

Thanks for reading along and happy nonfictioning! What do you do in your class when teaching nonfiction?

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