Groundhogs....Shadows...and getting outside.

Today is Groundhog day!!  I love this quirky little holiday and I have some bright ideas how to tie it into your curriculum. 

So first, a little history....way back in the day (you know feudal lords and peasant farmers), Candlemas Day, a Christian Holiday, was celebrated by blessing the remaining candles so they would last the rest of the winter.  The farmers would check to see if they had enough hay in their stores to last.  The big question was would spring come early or would they need more hay and grain for their cattle because winter was going to drag on longer?  February 2nd is exactly halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

In a Scottish poem:
If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
There'll be twa (two) winters in the year

According to an old English song:
If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Come, Winter, have another flight;
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Go Winter, and come not again.

Did the groundhog see his shadow??  Don't know yet, but your students can explore theirs.  Try this activity to help your students connect with the world around them and understand the movement of the earth.  I've done this with my second and third graders and they seem to be as amazed as to what happens to their shadow as the little ones.

Start first thing in the morning.  These pictures were taken last year on a beautiful sunny day just after February 2nd.

 Trace the shadow of one or two students.  TIP: trace the students feet into a box so they will know exactly where to stand each time you trace.

 We traced at each recess.

 The shadows of course moved and got smaller....time for a little predicting.  What will happen at the next recess?  Most said their shadows would keep shrinking (they got the movement part right).  Surprise!!! Just like the india-rubber ball they did not grow at all like proper children. 

I love sharing Robert Lewis Stevenson's famous poem My Shadow.  That little shadow that goes in and out with you can be a lot of fun.  Shadow tag can be a fun way to stomp on your friends head without anyone getting hurt. For weeks we jump on each other as we walk across the playground.

Most years it is too snowy to use chalk.  Don't let that stop you.  One year we had so much snow we could take a stick and really dig deep, tracing just one student shadow (I picked the student with good snow boots and snow pants ).  I thought about using a bottle of snow paint this year (but no snow).  Snow paint is just spray bottle and thinned down poster paints.  Don't stay inside just because there is snow on the ground.

Groundhog Day is a good time to go out searching for signs of spring.  Take some time really looking at those bare trees, draw and write what you see.

Are there buds?  How big are they?  Go back out every couple of weeks to see how things are changing.  Record what you see, give your students time to notice the small changes over time.

One more bright idea??  In second and third grade we made paper plate sundials.

Just a cheap paper plate and a long pencil (or wooden skewer).  Every hour (on the hour) we would stop and go mark our plates.  It can be eye opening to students to see how different the "sun clock" looks from the one in our classroom.

Need some more bright ideas?  Follow this link to Teacher Bits and Bobs for bright ideas on classroom management.

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Five for Friday....Cowboy Style

It has been a crazy fun-filled week!  I wanted to share some of our fun by linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and Five for Friday. 

The last week of January is always Cowboy Poetry Festival time (you can check it out here).

Hollywood cowboys mix with the real ones.  There is music, poems, stories, art, and some of the most beautifully crafted cowboy gear, along with workshops for those who want to hone their skills.  I am rocking my cowboy self with a shirt made for my grandmother and a belt my husband bought me 35 years and 4 kids ago. 

1.
Wednesday we had some wonderful moms come in and help us have a Buckaroo Breakfast with our second grade reading buddies.  They were lining up for seconds (I like to think it is because I make a killer pancake, but really, kids this age would eat a pile even if they were hard and dry).

We went back to our buddies in the afternoon and they helped us write poems.  They turned out so awesome!!  Here is one of my favorites:

I am a cowgirl.

Hear the wind blowing.

See the horses run.

Feel the bumpy road.

Smell the burning hair.

Touch the horse.

2.
Thursday I gave each student a copy of my little book What's Under Your Hat?  I confess to being pretty proud of how it turned out!!  I don't have the black and white graphics yet...so everyone got a color copy to take home. (you can find it in my store, here)

3.
Friday...What can I say?  Switch Around Day!  In my room we made these cute cute cute horses.

Next door they were painting sunsets.

Then they moved on and listened to and drew the story of Pecos Bill (sorry no pictures, but this was a favorite.  They loved learning how to draw a cowboy.  They just tucked their pictures away before I could snag one to take a picture).
After the story of Pecos Bill they needed some cactus....these were next.

Last...boots.  Every cowboy needs a good pair of boots.  How fun are these?

Getting ready for the glitter and sequence.

4.
We ended the day visiting each classroom reciting the poem we have been practicing:

5.
Come on in my room anytime and have some fun, learn something new, make another friend.

Happy Trails to you...until we meet again!

Let snowball throwing begin!

Don't miss the BIGGEST Snowball Fight of the Year!!

22 of your favorite bloggers have teamed up to bring you a...

Our forts are built...
the snowballs are packed & stacked...
and we're about to BLAST you with FREEBIES!!

So lace up your boots, pull on your mittens,
and get ready to load up on 'SNOW' much good stuff!!

Hop on over to to the Happy Teacher Heaven facebook page to pick up my freebie!

Look for this tab on every facebook page to find the next FREEBIE.

Note: You will not be able to access the freebies from an iPad.  

Click the image below to download a copy of the clickable map to find your way to all the 'snow forts'!

The Snowball Fight begins at 10 am CST on Saturday, January 18th.  

But don't delay because the snowballs melt at 10 pm CST on Monday, January 20th!!

We hope you have fun on the hop and find lots of fun freebies that you and your kiddos will love!

Make sure to follow our blogs too so you'll never miss a FREEBIE!  

Thanks for joining our Snowball Fight!!

Time....it passes sslowly

...or not at all for our littles.  Time seems so easy for us "old people".  It is concrete, set in stone, we get it because we have lived it.  Sometimes it is easy to forget our little kinders haven't lived as long as we have and they don't get it.  For them time gets all mixed up.  They can repeat some of the right words, day, week, year, January, Monday....but they still don't understand it (that's why they mix it up so much).  I blogged about that over at PreK and K sharing.  Click here to read my post.

Then I saw this hat on Cupcake for the Teacher's blog.  So to help my kinders understand a little more, we made these hats today.  We started with the months of the year (today was the first day we sang them all).  We looked at the letters, and stretched the sounds, then found the months we needed.   We glued them to a sentence strip as we went along.  If you need the months you can find them here.  Be sure to glue them end to end, so you don't run out of room.

Next we cut out our triangle, glued a star to the top, and came back for the die cut numbers.  I told my students to glue the 2 and the 4 on first, then the 0 and 1.  I told them that the 2 and the 4 had to hang off the hat or it wouldn't all fit.  When those were glued, then you could add the last two numbers.

Finally I stapled the word strip into a circle and stapled the hat onto the strip.  Voila!  A Happy New Year hat.  Aren't they just too cute?  You would think I was having a party in my room.

Thank goodness for teachers who are willing to share.  When I saw Teri's hat I knew I had to make it. Go check out her Happy New Year hat.  Check out her blog too....she always has the cutest ideas.

Tomorrow we start our personal timeline project.  I will blog about that as the project progresses.  For now the first day back has worn me out.  It is time for bed.

Currently....it's a fresh start

I love the first Day of the month because it's Currently time!!  Time to link up with Farley at Oh Boy Fourth Grade and see what every one is doing.

Most everything is self explanatory.  I love Christmas, my decorations, the quiet and peaceful feeling when I am sitting at night or early morning and the only light is from the tree and whatever candles I happen to light.  On Christmas Eve, we break out every oil lamp I can find and read and sing the Christmas story from the bible.  On Christmas Eve I also light a bayberry candle (an ode to my mother and our New England traditions). 

New Year's Day has always been about the parades for me.  Growing up it was the Mummer's Parade in Philadelphia and since I moved west the Rose Parade has become important.  Our small town high school band has been three times.  Twice I have gone as a chaperone.  I loved it!  So now we check it out every January 1st.

I have a long list of projects I wanted to accomplish over Christmas break.  Most of them are related to my New Year Goal of living more simply.  I need to hurry though....time is slipping by and I do not have much checked off my list.

What are you currently up to?

It's Goal Setting Time

A New Year means new goals and a new start.  It's time to think about how things are going and what you would like to accomplish in the new year.  It's even more fun to link up with blogging friends and share goals.  I am linking up with A Peach for the Teacher tonight to share my thoughts on what I would like to do in the coming year.

I know...I know....we all want to be better people.  I want to become better by living simply, less clutter in my life, more time outside, less going to the store, more using what I already have.  I often think of nice things I could do for people, but procrastinate the doing.  I want to do more doing good deedsm and less thinking about good deeds.  Does that make sense??

I want to present at conferences.  I have always been good at that when I do it for Girls Scout and Boy Scout leaders.  I would like to do it for other teachers.  I kind-of a lot to say and I would love a chance to say it.

I want to be more professional in the completion of my lesson plans.  I always have them, but I confess to them being simple shorthand notes that really only I can follow.  They often get lost and don't stay in the same place.  I would like to change that (if for no other reason than I could then share them with others).

I have a lot of stuff.  So much that sometimes it is hard to find what I need or I forget I had something and the time to use it has passed.  I need to both get better organized and get rid of some stuff (see goal #1 live simply)

I have a lot of ideas and partially finished products, my goal is to get my store filled with quality products teachers will want to use.  Along with that I would like to blog more.  That means I need to learn to take more pictures.  I know when I read a blog I read the pictures first.  Not having pictures often keeps me from writing.  So....more pictures, more writing.  We do some pretty cool stuff in my classroom.  I love sharing.

For fun??  I thought about wanting to get my craft room cleaned out so I can do more crafts.  Crafts are fun, but cleaning my craft room is not.  So......for now I want to hike Angel's Landing in Zion's National Park again.  I love that place and I haven't hiked it in years.

Snowball Fight

My school outlaws snowballs....but I think the administration won't mind this kind.

My students love playing this game...we played with jingle bells in December.  Now I just need some big white pom-poms.  I have little ones, I have white unifix cubes, I could use ping-pong balls or styrofoam balls.  And look, my cotton balls are pretty big too.

Playing Missing Addend with Jingle Bells

First we count how many snowballs we have.  Then everyone will close their eyes and I will hide some in a cup...or maybe a hat, or even a mitten.  Once everyone opens their eyes we will try to figure out how many are missing.  We will practice our math talk.  That math talk is important to the common core, and important for these little ones to understand their thinking and learning processes and to find the words to express that.

We play this whole group a few times before I turn them loose.  Then I will help them record their game on these little handouts.  The first one is a recording sheet for their games, the second page is to help with the math talk.

 

Missing Addend is a Common Core Standard in First Grade (1.OA.B.8), but my kinders love playing this game and it is helping them become fluent in their math facts to 5 (K.OA.A.5).  

I love using seasonal "stuff" as manipulatives and I have several different versions of this same game in my tpt store.  They are in both color and black and white.  Come check them out here.

If you want to find more good ideas and Kindergarten blogs check out the linky over at Simply Kinders.  There are so many new blogs and old favorites, all with great ideas to use in your classroom.