Happy New Year from kindergarten-lessons.com,

Winter Theme

Be sure to check out the Winter Theme on the site for art, literature, science and math ideas for your classroom. The pages include:

• Winter math and science,
  http://www.kindergarten-lessons.com/winter_theme.html
• Winter art and literacy,
  http://www.kindergarten-lessons.com/winter_theme_activities.html
• Teaching literacy with winter theme activities,
  http://www.kindergarten-lessons.com/teaching_literacy.html
• Teach hibernation with a class made winter bulletin board,
  http://www.kindergarten-lessons.com/kindergarten-bulletin-boards.html

Teach math with old greeting cards

During the first week in January, have students bring a used holiday greeting card of their choice for Show and Tell. Use the cards to research the following (as always, demonstrate first):

• How many blocks long is your greeting card?
• How many one-inch blocks does it take to cover the surface of your card?
• How many ways can we sort the holiday images on your cards? (Have groups of 8 students work together)
• How many ways can we graph your holiday images? (Number of cards with animals, without animals, number of cards with angels, without angels, cards with borders, cards without, etc.)

Remember to bring extra cards for children who do not celebrate December holidays or for those who forget to bring one.

I would love to hear from readers who are using

Show and Tell to teach math and science and let me know how it is working in your classroom.

Winter Wolves

Another winter mini-theme starts with the story of

The Gunniwolf. Compare it with other wolf and fox stories. Use the book, Wolf Island to introduce environmental issues in a manner that young children can grasp.

Finding classroom resources

When I began my teaching career I had few resources and was a great scrounger. Companies such as "Ravensburger" and "Melissa and Doug" make durable, long lasting products. I regularly found inexpensive, easy memory and lotto games, puzzles with less than 30 pieces (count the pieces before purchasing), barely used craft kits and other items for the imagination station, books, good quality vinyl painting aprons, easels and puppets at garage sales or second hand stores.

Other sources for low priced classroom materials are local second hand sites like http://www.craigslist.org or http://www.kijji.com. Some prefer these to Ebay as the sites are local and items can be examined first and paid for in cash.

Free classroom resources links
http://www.mysavings.com/free-product-samples/teacher-samples/
http://www.thecanadianteacher.com/links

Try the free coloring sheets from Crayola for those moments when you need a quick picture for your students.
http://www.crayola.com/free-coloring-pages/

Happy Teaching,