Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is almost here!

I love spending a few days on this tradition. It's such a fun holiday teach, filled with tons of rich culture. 

Typically, for our non-fiction reading/research, I like to use Scholastic News (and yes, I keep all of the year's sets so I have the theme when I need them to fit a theme or subject), ReadWorks.org, PebbleGo, and Reading A-Z. 

Here are a few activities we get to throughout the week. 

We make a dragon puppet - using popsicle sticks. It's great as a stand-alone activity, or I actually like to glue it to the top of the compare/contrast writing activity for a little added flare. 

Another fun activity we do - write about the Chinese New Year and glue it to a flap book with the dragon attached to the ends. You could also use the page without a title to do a Sam and the Lucky Money summary (or any book) 

Sam and the Lucky Money is one of my go-to books. It actually used to be a 2nd Grade story in the Reading series. I don't teach from the reading series, but it was one of the stories I actually did.

There's a really cute directed draw from Art Hub for Kids, too - a lantern. My kids always love doing those drawings. I'll post the link in our Google Classroom and it can be a center activity, the drawing to a writing response, OR maybe it's an option for morning "tubs" if they're finished with all their work. 

You can grab these activities (and some more!) in my Chinese New Year Mini-Unit. 

Another cute activity we do is with the book, The Panda Problem...just because. It's SUCH a cute book! It was a Florida Sunshine State book and I read it during this week and I fell in love with it! 

We did a directed draw from - yep, you guessed it - Art for Kids Hub, 

Then we did a little writing to go with it. You can download the free writing page HERE. 

Have a great Wednesday!

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Valentine's Writing Ideas

Every year - I change up what kind of Valentine's Day writing I do. I think it really just depends on the class I have, maybe??

Anyway - I wanted to put all of my past ideas in one post for you - so here you go! 

One of the things I do is to have them write about things they love about themselves! I really love doing this. You'd be amazed at how hard this is for them. 

I use the heart scrapbook punch to cut out various size hearts on various paper for a cute pop of color. 

I do make it a writing lesson too, of course. 

Another idea I've done is to have them create a Google Slide with a speech bubble. I take their picture, remove the background (thank you, PicsArt for doing all the work for me!) and then insert it into a google slide. I print them up and they can put it on the inside of a card for whoever they want to give it to. Parents, grandparents, whoever they live with. 

One of my favorite cards we make is this one - I let them watercolor paint whatever they want.  I take their picture and remove the background, print them up and glue them to the front of the card. I love using that heart hole puncher to make quick hearts! 

If they don't feel like blowing kisses, no biggie - they can pose however they want. I have a few other props they can use too. 

They can write a simple letter to glue on the inside of the card - 

I have some freebie letter templates - click the picture to download!

Here are a few other Valentine activities we love to do! 

Candy heart math is one of our favorites

And our Class Books - such a fun writing and they always want to read them throughout the year. 

And ELA and Math Centers - for Grade 1 and Grade 2

Hershey Kiss Similes 

One of the best centers - Label it and write about it!

And these Monthly Family projects are always fun to hang up in the room! 

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Valentine's Week Wrap Up.

Valentine's is DONE and OVER!

Woohoo! Honestly, I can't wait to pack it all up and move on.

I know... I'm so "heartless." haha!

But, here's a recap of what we did the last few days/week to get ready for the "big day."

To start with, we made our heart window clings... which I'm in LOVE with.

Then we started on our Valentine's cards. I can't even say enough, of how cute they are!

And while I was out sick, my kids did a day of Love, Splat! They LOVE Splat. So it was a perfect book to leave for sub plans for the day. 

We also made our class book for the week - Who Will Be My Valentine? which goes perfectly with Who Will Be My Valentine This Year?  My Kids LOVE making Class Books! Check more out HERE. 

Something else we did today was one of my favorite poems for visualizing and using details in a text... Monster Love! This poem comes from DeeDee's February Poetry Pack.  We practiced it a few times, then talked about what words describe the monster to help you visualize...

Just look at all these awesome looking Love Monsters.... they're all so different and so creative. 

Sometimes we do a walkabout after we do illustrations to match our poems...they BEGGED to do a walkabout on this one so they could see everyone's monsters. 

And finally... we did our Candy Heart Math!! They kids ALWAYS love this.

When they finished their booklet, They had to see how many hearts they could stack... They got pretty high, but with all the desk bumping going on, not sure who got the tallest stack. ha!

FINALLY, it was time to hand out the Valentine's! woohoo!!

Look at this amazing creation one of the parents made!! So amazing!!

and look at these amazing HOMEMADE Reese's Peanut Butter Cups! Not ashamed to admit... they didn't make it home to share with my husband. Woops!

And finally... One of my students gave me this little gem. It's so I'll remember him forever....and forever I will remember him.... but aside from that, I think this is my new classroom mascot. haha! It's perfect, right??

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Candy Heart Math

It's about that time again!!

Like I said in my Valentine Card post, I'm NOT a Valentine person. I'm just not. 

But one of the things I do every year (for the last 10 years or so) is Candy Heart Math.

I get these little boxes of Candy Hearts each year... and every year, the colors inside the boxes are different. haha Oh well, my class always knows that sometimes we just need to be flexible. 

Most of the time, the boxes have blue in them. This year, the boxes I got didn't have blue. Sometimes they have white instead of blue. Oh well, we make it work. 

And every year, when my kids see me buy the boxes of candy hearts, they beg to have some... and every year, I make them do the math for them. haha. 

Since C has decided that she no longer wants to take naps, there's no real good time for the girls to do it, without C trying to steal their candy... even though she already had her own box. haha

So... first we sort...and count them - write the number up top!

Then they write them in the hearts, so we have a starting recording sheet.  There's a sheet for fractions, if your kids are ready for that too.

Then graph and answer some questions....

Ten frame fun...and then answering 10 more and 10 less questions.

Adding... there's also a sheet for multiplying, if your kids are ready for that! I always had a few 2nd and 3rd graders who were ready for it.

Then we do some comparisons....

One of the last activities we do is Estimating! How many hearts do you think will fill up the heart? 

At school, I like to turn it into a book and put a cover on it. 

Here is a preview of everything that is included. Click the picture to check it out in my TPT store. And you check out my post from last year HERE. 

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