Polar Letters

To begin our polar unit I read 

a letter. Kids love getting letters.

This gets them excited about learning,

and that's a win for me!

All of my letters begin with an overview letter.

That can be all, sometimes there are more letters

to go with units, sometimes there is only one.

In this unit, there is an overview letter that gets delivered with word cards then 

each day we get a different letter from different animals from the Arctic.

My students really loved getting a passport with stickers when we did our

Holidays Around the World unit, so I added "stickers" that the

children can glue them on our ice scene.

Each day a new letter with an animal.

When I close up the letters, I want to keep track of

which animal is which.

So sometimes I write in cursive.

This cool printable and all the letters are... did you guess on my broken computer?

Well you'd be correct!! 

I did a rough cut for my class but older kids could do a super quick 

job of cutting around the animals.

Check out all of my in action ideas HERE.

 

Polar Animals Study

 We started off the year by traveling to the Arctic.

We read a letter introducing the whole unit. Then each day we met new animals. 

I added some winter-themed pencils and blue markers to our writing tool turn-about.

Here are some of the books we used:

We made icicles in our journals.

We have to at least make as many as we are old.

This was one of my transitions. They spun the paperclip and put some "ice" on that animal.

The "ice" are glass beads- blue, clear, and frosted.

Polar animals spin

The tray came from Dollar Tree.

All of our centers are stored here.

I share my classroom, so everything is stored here.

I cover it with a pocket chart after my class is done.

The large empty space on top is for our stews, 

which I put up high on a shelf. 

Penguin roll

Penguins are from Dollar Tree

penguin mini erasers from the KinderCrate.

Kids roll the number cube and add that many penguins to the penguins.

Pokey pins are From the Pond.

I make my students lay on their bellies to poke these.

Random blocks and animals from Target.

Roll and Build

The matching play dough cards are underneath the key card.

Winter magnet tiles

Penguins

I thought they would be hard like those counting bears,

but these are more pliable.

This game.... the pieces are good...when not used together lol

It is supposed to balance, it is more frustrating than anything.

Watch the video.

Polar and Snowman Stews HERE

but just get the bundle HERE.

Week 2 I added this one :)

Morning Work week 3

Here are our morning bins:

Last year, we had 4 rotations of bins which was perfect!!!! Four days of school, four sets of bins.  This year, I have to have 5 sets lol more children.  I used to prep and change them on Friday's, now it's a hot mess and I am always forgetting to change them. Y'all I wrote it on the calendar.... never looked at the calendar lol

I need to figure out some sort of system, it's almost the end of the semester lol

 Trace and erase!

Purchase them here.

These are pattern cards from here.

Snowmen, fox, and penguin erasers :)

These containers are from Dollar Tree.

Children roll a number cube and put that many erasers inside.

Penguin and penguin erasers of course!

Snowmen and a snowman!

These cards are from here. 

I split the cards up between three bins

one got these cute erasers

these drawers are from my chest of drawers

more on my storage here.

One got polar bear erasers

one got walruses :)

Here we have snowmen with pom poms.

Normally, I would have the kids sort them by color,

but this year, I wasn't going to sort out the pom-poms lol

Kids will use tongs to put the pom-poms on the snowflakes.

January Morning Bins Week 2

Here are this week's morning bins.

Ice Cube Patterns from here.

Pom-pom snowmen

there are pinchers/tongs in there too!

find them here.

Here the children place pony beads on the polar bear's belly.

There are several polar bear cards.

This is from a bundle, with books included.

Tracing cards from here.