This contest is for a "brand-new" book to add to your "winter literature" collection. The winner will receive a book of choice from my favorite winter books which are listed in the document below. All you have to do is post a comment with the title of one of your favorite winter books and tell how you like to use it in the classroom. Share at least 1 extension activity for art, writing, math, science, or social studies.
The contest ends on New Year's Day at 12 noon. Once I post the winner's name, they will have 24 hours to contact me via e-mail me. Happy New Year to everyone!
One book I like to read is Five Little Penguins Slipping on the Ice by Steve Metzger. This book is good for compare/contrast with the Five Little Monkeys. We do a whole group comparison and then they write about their favorite book to make a class book!
ReplyDeleteI read Snowmen at Night. Then we connect that with things that they like to do out in the snow. We then make a snowman scene for our classroom since we don't have windows. I have them draw on blue paper with white chalk. Then we add a black line vertical, and horizontal to act as a window frame. The students really enjoy this activity!
ReplyDeleteI LOVE books so it is hard to pick but one of my favorite books is Snowmen at Night. Not only is the writing clever but my kids LOVE to look for the hidden pictures in each illustration. Next week my students will make a directed art snowman and then write about what they think the snowman in their yard might do at night. My writing template is available for download on my blog www.finallyinfirst.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorites is The Mitten by Jan Brett. I have a huge white mitten I sewed up a few years ago. We use the masks from Jan Brett's website to retell the story. The kids love it!!
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I also like to read Martin MacGregor's snowman. We then make a snowman using different materials brought in from the students. This shows that students don't just have to have snow to make a snowman they can use other marterials.
ReplyDeleteOne of my all time favorites is The Mitten by Jan Brett...my students usually use the masks to retell the story. Then they create a flow map to sequence the story...we also tie this into science and discuss hibernation. It's a fun book to use...and my kids always love it.
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One of my favorites is Snowflake Bentley. It is a wonderful non fiction story explaining the discovery of snowflakes. Snow is foreign to us in San Diego. I love to have the kids write a simple paragraph using The Four Blocks sentence frame and then make snowflakes.
ReplyDeleteWell for the life of me, I can't think of the title of the book. I will continue to search on line and call my mother (we teach at the same school) Anways, it talks about an out of control snowball that catches everything in its way.
ReplyDeleteWe go to the gym and pretend to be the semi-out of control snowball. How to play: one person is it. They catch a person and form a semi-circle by holding hands and catch another child and so on. The game stops when all of the children have been caught.
This is fun when we can't go outside because it is to cold :)
Jennifer
One of my favorite books to use is The Snowy Day. We always do an author study with Ezra Jack Keats after our Winter Break. After reading the book we brainstorm as a class all the things we'd do on a Snowy Day. The students also create Snowy Day" pictures and write about them. I also have some saved pictures I've taken from times it snowed in our state and in small writing groups the students choose a picture to write about. As a final activity I give each student a picture of a snowflake and we come up with words that describe snow, then we turn those into smilies..Snow is as cold as a million ice cubes. It make a great bulletin board display.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favoirte books is The Jacket I Wear in the Snow. I am in Texas also where we don't often dress for snowy weather. I dress up in winter clothing as I read the story. We brainstorm & discuss adjectives to describe the various pieces of clothing. The students then have a chance to go to station to dress up in clothing and then write a story on dressing including the correct sequence & using adjectives.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite winter books is The Mitten by Jan Brett. We always do many activities to go along with it. My students love to act out the song from Mrs. McPuppet as well. A writing activity we do is A _________ crawled into the mitten because ____________. The students then draw a picture of the animal at the bottom of the page and we cover it with a mitten cut-out.
ReplyDeleteI love "The Mitten". We usually do a math activity which starts with comparing the sizes of the mitten before and after (talking about equal and different). I then like to give my kids (who are in groups of 5) materials to estimate and build a mitten that would be big enough for six k's to fit into. We test the mittens and talk about if each groups mitten worked or not as well as the process they developed to estimate how big their mitten would be.
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This isn't necessarily my favorite winter book, but I wanted to incorporate winter into a descriptive paragraph with my 1st Graders. We read the book "The Tale of Jack Frost" by Marcia T. Jones (there are other ones out there), and they wrote a paragraph of what they thought Jack Frost would look like if he were real. It was fun to see where there imaginations took them! We displayed them outside of the classroom with a picture they drew to go along with their description. The pictures were drawn on dark blue construction paper with white crayons and painted over top with a water/epsom salt mixture to appear like frost. I wish I would've taken a picture as they turned out very cute!
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite winter books to read with my class is "The Snowy Day." (I just got the big book of it also, so I excited to use it after vacation!) I use this book for teaching sequencing. As a writing extension to the book my kindergarten kids write/draw what they like to do on snowy days. Here in Buffalo, NY we have a lot of them!
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the Mitten we do TONS of activities with mittens. My fave is called Warm Fuzzies. Each child gets a template with a pair of mittens. On one mitten they write a compliment about a classmate that would make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside when they read it...AKA WARM FUZZIES!! On the other mitten they illustrate it. I attach the mitten on blue paper with a peice of yearn connecting the mittens!!!
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite books is Snowballs by Lois Ehlert, I teach Pre-K and the children love the pictures in this book. After reading, I let the children know we will be making our very own snowman, right in our classroom! You ought to see their faces! I then bring out real items that I bring from home-a hat, scarf, carrot, buttons, mittens, 2 sticks and anything else I want to decorate the snowman. I then tell them that since we don't have real snow, we live in Texas, we are going to build our snowballs from white bulleting board paper so we will be using our imagination. :) So, we then build 3 snowballs from paper and discuss large, medium and small. I tape the bulletin board paper together so it will stay and hot glue the balls together. Then, we decorate our snowman. As we decorate, we draw/write and number on our white board the sequence to making the snowman, each step at a time. (I keep this as simple as possible so that we are able to "reread" when we are finished.) As we go along, I take pictures of the steps. When finished, we admire our snowman, vote on his name and set him aside for the next days lesson. Afer school, I print the pictures we took and get them ready for the next days lesson. The following day, we review the white board. As we review the sequencing on the white board, I glue our real photos on a long piece of bulletin board paper and write under the picutures, asking for help with everything as we go along. It really becomes an interactive sequencing/writing activity. When all is done, we put our snowman in the hall for everyone to see and our sequencing of how we made him on the wall. If you teach older grades, the students can then write their own "how to."
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite winter books is A Snowman Named Just Bob. I use it as a mentor text for writing workshop. It's a great example for how to add juicy words to make writing more descriptive. The students then write their own snowman stories after making a snowman. I make sure my students do not put names on the front of anything and when the project is finished they have to match up the writing to the snowman. There's a fun follow up book called A Snowgirl Named Just Sue.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all of the wonderful literacy ideas! I will post the winner in the next few minutes.
ReplyDeleteI know the giveaway is over, but I just found your blog and this particular post. One must read winter book is The Snow Globe Family by Jane O'Connor. My daughter is in first grade and adores this story. It's about a family that lives in a snow globe on another family's shelf. There hasn't been a snowy day in the snow globe in a really long time and the family wonders when one will come. The owners of the snow globe have a baby that spots it one day and well...you'll just have to read it to see what happens. So cute. And obviously, a good extension activity would be to write about what it would be like to live inside a snow globe...or to make a snow globe even. We did both here at home with our daughter and she loved it! And just because you can appreciate the mind of a 6 year old, our daughter said she would not like to live in a snow globe because she gets motion sickness very easily.
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