Time4Learning

I've been invited to try Time4Learning for one month in exchange for a candid review. This online curriculum can be useful for those wanting homeschool materials or for those seeking help with topics such as homeschool record keeping. Find out how to write your own review!

You can too by going to Time4Learning.  

As soon as we have tried this in our daycare and with one of my own children I will review this product.

Best,
Rose

"The Snowy Day"

Our next "A Five Day Read" is on the book "The Snowy Day".  Too bad all our deep snow melted the day before beginning this book as I had some great ideas using real snow.  And who ever heard of 60 degrees in NE Ohio in January!?! (and don't think I'm complaining as I am not a snow person... I like it warm)

You can see a video of the book here...

As always, I picked a letter to go with this book.  Since we've already completed Ss and Pp I decided to go with Ww since the book talks about winter weather. Here are some pictures of our letter book.

 On the left we dot markered the letter Ww and colored the wagon.  On the right we did 

some letter Ww recognition activities.

On the left we matched shapes and talked about the picture and what sound they heard

at the beginning of each picture.  On the right we circled letter Ww's, circled pictures that began

with letter Ww and traced letter Ww's.

 On the left we followed directions to color the letters or Ww pictures and then at the bottom 

we colored spaces with W green and w blue.  On the left we glued pictures into the water 

that began with the /w/ sound and we traced letter Ww's.

 On the left we dot markered the path of Ww's to help the spider find his web.  On the right

we colored each circle that had a Ww.

 On the left we made our own letter Ww's and we found pictures that began with the /w/ sound.

On the right we put a six piece puzzle of a wagon together.

To introduce the book we did two activities.

 We talked about activities we like doing in the snow and then dictated and drew our favorite.

We talked about what we wear on a snowy day and drew us in some of those clothes with a

dictated response as to what the picture shows us wearing.

Some of the art projects we did with the book...

We drew in our faces with crayons, used my marker to trace names (not washable), and then

we waterpainted ourselves on a snowy day.

 We fingerpainted with blue, added cut snowflakes which they could color, and 

put dabs of glitter with glitter glue onto the paper.

We made winter necklaces

 We made cotton ball snowmen.

 We cut snowflakes.

Some of the concepts we worked on...

 On the left we colored things you can do in the winter and circled our favorite thing.  On the right we

did a pre-writing activity from Homeschool Creations.

On the left we did some critical thinking by looking at the picture and deciding whether a sled, ice skates, roller skates, or shovel would best go with the picture.  We also drew a picture of what they could make looking at the picture (this one is a snowman).  On the right we did some predicting ~we decided which picture would come next after I read the sentence.

 We sorted winter vs. summer clothes from Homeschool Creations "The Snowy Day" pack.

We sequenced the story.

We also did a lot of number 5 activities.

 A number 5 activity sheet.

 Number puzzles.

 and a few more activity sheets.

Hope you enjoyed "The Snowy Day" as much as we did.  Next up... "Mrs. Wishy Washy's Farm".
Best,
Rose

"The Three Snow Bears"

Happy New Year Everyone!

We started off the New Year with the flu the book "The Three Snow Bears".  The children really enjoyed this book and we did many activities with it... unfortunetly someone (me) accidently deleted all the pictures on my card and I scrambled to get some pictures of what we did back. Here is a recount of what we did.

We always work on a letter and I picked the letter Ii to go with the igloo in the book.  Here are the pages of our letter book.

 Above is the cover in which we colored the letter Ii and igloo on the left and on the right we colored the

letter Ii's, found the letter Ii's, and circled the letter Ii's.

 On the left we glued matching shapes and talked about the pictures and how they begin with the

short i sound.  On the right we dot markered all the Ii's.

 On the left we glued letter Ii's and colored the iguana with ice skates.  On the right we used clues and directions to color each item.  We also colored the letter Ii's red at the bottom.

 On the left we colored the Indian girl by following the key (I=green; i=yellow) and we traced the letter Ii's.  On the right we colored ice creams that started with the /i/ sound and traced more letter Ii's.

 On the left we traced more Ii's.  On the right we wrote our own letter Ii's and on the bottom we found 

pictures that began with the /i/ sound.

We began the book study by trying out a story map.  We have never done this and here is what ours looked like.

It was a bit challenging but I think well worth the challenge.  I needed to do this for a workshop I've 

been taking.  It proved to be something I will incorporate into my "A Five Day Read" program and 

we will see where it takes us.  

We did this slowly over the course of five days.  The children helped find the pictures and decide

what to put on each post-it note.  I like the idea of using post-it notes and I've seen this on several

other blogs (so thanks for the great idea!).

We did many skill builder activity sheets to keep us up on skills.  Here are a few.

 Coloring polar bears by color word and matching picture to shadow.

 Sorting by size and sequencing the story.

Pre-writing and which one is different.

 Matching the clip art animal to the real animal.

You can find some of what I used here and here.

Some of our art projects were...

 We made a paper piecing polar bear.

 We made a cotton ball polar bear.

We made an Inuit girl.

We waterpainted an Inuit girl.

We also worked on the numbers 3 and 4.

 We did several activity sheets.

 We also did a lot of counting.

Lastly, we talked about the problems in the story.  We spent some time talking about manners and what kind of manners were used in the book.  We used an activity from here.

We took this activity and decided as I read each card whether it was using

good manners or bad manners.

Thanks for stopping by.  Next up is... "The Snowy Day".

Best,

Rose