Math Book Monday - 100 Snowmen

I made it! I almost forgot about it, but I'm here! Baby is bathed and asleep, hubby is working nights, so I get to just chill out in my pajamas with the dogs sleeping beside me all night. Not a bad way to spend a Monday night.

I feel bad about tonight's post because it is the middle of May, but my friends to the south inspired me. Usually it's us up here in Canada with the crazy winter that never ends--snowstorms in May! Poor friends in South Dakota got over a foot of snow yesterday! So sad. I hope it melts and you can get our your shorts and flip flops soon!!

Until then, how about a fun snowman math book! :) This one is called 100 Snowmen by Jen Arena. The illustrations are adorable. The snowmen are hilarious and also a tad bit creepy, with their black coal eyes. I love them despite the creepiness. Click the picture to check it out on Amazon.

It starts with one lonely snowman with a carrot nose. Then more and more snowman join him until there are.... 100 SNOWMEN! It's fun because each time more snowmen come, there is an addition sentence to see what the total is at. This is a great book to talk about addition, counting to 100, and numbers to 100. I thought this book would go great with my Snowman Counting & Number Activities {0-120} Freebie! This is one of my more popular freebies at TpT. It has snowman number cards to 120 and seven different activities to go with them--counting on forwards, counting backwards, ordering from least to greatest, numbers one less and one more, comparing numbers, and counting forward to 100 or 120.

Now, if you feel like these activities would be perfect for your kiddos right now but you don't quite feel like pulling out the snowmen in May... DON'T WORRY! I've got you covered! I made an identical pack featuring a generic Melonheadz cutie theme. Check out my Math Kids Counting & Number Activities {0-120} Freebie on TpT!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week!

Christmas Goodies {Bunch of Freebies}

12 more days 'til Christmas!! 6 more days of school!! Yee haw! So excited! Here are a few pics of the Christmas fun I've been doing at home. We tried to get the puppies to pose in front of the Christmas tree. This was the best shot we got. Bella is just staring intently at the treat. Hehe.

These were the cake pops I made this past weekend for a Christmas potluck with our friends. They were a big hit! I've made cake pops three times so far... this batch was the best yet! They take a lot of time, but so cute and so delicious!

After seeing these shirts on Pinterest, I had to order some! These are my ugly Christmas t-shirts from Vardagen. Love them!! Can't wait to wear them next week. I'm going to wear something Christmas-y each day next week. I also have a Grinch shirt, a "real" ugly Christmas sweater, and some reindeer antlers. Gotta spread the Christmas cheer!

And finally, here is my Christmas tree all prettied up. The presents are all wrapped up and waiting for Christmas now! This was take 2 of the Christmas tree. The day after we put it up, the tree fell over and all the lights and decorations fell off. Some even broke :( At least we got to decorate the tree twice, right? I am never going to be one of those people with the matchy-matchy tree, all in one beautiful colour scheme. No, sir! My tree has colourful lights and the most random collection of ornaments you will find--from Winnipeg Jets candy canes to a Mickey Mouse made out of walnuts to random ornaments from students of the past. I love it just the way it is! :)

Alright, onto some school-related Christmas fun! We finished up our Gingerbread unit. Look at all these books we read! We did a little tally on the side of our chart to see which book was the favourite in the class--The Gingerbread Girl won us over! The Gingerbread Cowboy was a close second. We just liked saying, "Giddy up!"

We decorated our own gingerbread houses using stickers, construction paper, and markers. They turned out pretty cute. Then we did some writing about the houses. You can download the writing paper from {here}. Candy clipart border is from KPM Doodles.

You can see some of our cute tissue paper trees. I give them the outline of a tree on manilla tag. Then they "modge podge" (glue/water mixture) tissue paper squares all over the tree. We cute them out and decorate with a BIT of glitter glue. So easy and so cute!

We also did Abby's "wet gingerbread" experiment (found for free here). We made predictions and observed what happens when a gingerbread man gets wet! Here's our soggy gingerbread man. Eew!

I had this colour by sight word worksheet from Kroger's Kindergarten (found for free here). I wanted to do a fun little activity to practice the sight words before we did the colouring page, so I made these sight word scramble cards. The letters for each sight word are printed on separate cards with a matching picture. I randomly passed out the letter cards and the students had to find the other students with matching pictures, then unscramble the letters to make a sight word! It was super fun and engaging! If you are interested, you can download the sight word cards {here}. Christmas clipart is from KPM Doodles.

Finally, we did some Christmas patterns today! I printed the patterns on 11x17" paper, so the Christmas items were really big. Students had to colour each row of items in a different pattern. It was good review on creating patterns. You can download the page {here}. This was actually a nice, relaxing activity this afternoon as we listened to some Christmas carols on the iPod. :)

Last up, I want to share a new freebie packet I made for TpT. It's called "Snowman Counting & Number Activities". I'm going to use one of the activities next week and then use the other ones when we get back from Christmas break. That's the great thing about snowmen--they can be used anytime, from November-February (at least where I live!! hehe). Click the picture below to check it out at TpT!

Inside the pack there are snowman cards from 0-100.

 And there are six different activity sheets to go with the number cards:

1. What comes next? -- counting on forwards
2. What comes before? -- counting backwards
3. Snowman Order -- ordering from least to greatest
4. Before and After -- numbers one less and one more
5. Greater Than or Less Than -- comparing numbers
6. Snowman Counting -- counting forward to 100

The great thing about these activities is they are so easy to differentiate! Just pass out different sets of number cards to each group, depending on their level (ie. 1-30, 1-50, or 1-100). Easy peasy! I hope you enjoy this pack! Happy Friday tomorrow, everyone! :)

A Random Smattering of Pictures {and a few freebies!}

Here's what we have been up to our first week back to school!

We started our math centres. The kids love them! Some of the ones I thought would be hard (One Less/One More, Snowball Ordering...), my kiddies are just flying through them!

Remember to check out my Winter Math Centers at TpT. Click the picture below to take you there!

Here are some fun snowman themed activities we have done this week. We listed all the parts of the snowman on this brace map.

Here is my mini monthly word wall. It hangs near my large word wall and changes themes monthly. Students can take the cards out during writing time. You can download the cards {here}.

The kids love playing snowman hangman. I use the words from the monthly word wall. The snowman came from Kim Adsit's Snowman Surprise unit.

We read "Snowmen at Night" and wrote about what else we thought snowmen might do at night while we are sleeping! 

We made these cute star snowmen inspired by Mrs. Schmelzer's First Grade. Ignore the flower border. I should probably change that. lol

This was our first time doing a Making Words activity, but they really enjoyed it! We came up with a ton of new words. These letters are from Kathleen at Growing Kinders. Get them here.

We read "Snowmen All Year" and talked about why we don't see snowmen in July. We also read the poem "Why?" by Deanna Jump from her Snowman Unit. They glued the poem in their poetry notebooks and drew a picture of what their snowman would do in the summer.

We also did this little science experiment from Deanna's unit: The Great Melting Race! We had a race to see who could melt an ice cube the fastest. Then we talked about the ways we could generate heat. It was a lot of fun! {Even if our hands got really cold!}

We read the book "The Greatest Snowman in the World" (so cute.... they loved it!) and did some how-to writing.

 

This is the student writing page. Click the picture to download it if you wish.

Lastly, we read "The Mitten". We completed our story map together. Then we acted out the story together using the animal masks from Jan Brett's website. So much fun!

Afterwards, we each took one of our mittens and brainstormed some adjectives to describe them. (Based on Cara Caroll's adejctive lesson seen here.) On the back of the page we did a graph to see how many people wore mittens and how many wore gloves. Click either picture to download these mitten freebies! Clipart is from the adorable KPM Doodles.

A fun week to start off the New Year! Up next week: bears and hibernation! Look forward to a fun and easy Eric Carle inspired art project.

Happy Monday tomorrow!