Penguins & Valentines & America

January and February have flown by like crazy!

I was actually able to fit a good chunk of valentine's day fun into February. We wrote about one thing we love about school, wrote valentines, played minute it to win it games; such as, stacking conversation heart towers, valentine lava race (where the kids race but can only step on the paper hearts to get to the other side).



They thought this game was going to be super easy until they had their turn! I think the highest tower without falling by the end of the minute was 9!




We also sorted conversation hearts and counted how many of each color. Their reward for finishing the activity was that I let them eat their hearts! I only gave each of them 10 hearts :)


Sorting CVC pictures into short vowel sound mailboxes. Each envelope had a picture on it and the kids had to work in teams to correctly place them in the mailbox labeled with either an a, e, i, o, u based on the middle sound.


My non-fiction focus for this month was all about penguins. As usual, the kids love non-fiction stuff. We made our can/like/have information chart (the kids love when I find real pictures to attach to their facts). We measured ourselves against the tallest penguin (emperor) and then discovered who in our class is the tallest (emperor) and the shortest (fairy). The two "winners" still walk around flaunting their penguin name lol. We read lots of Tacky books. This class really loved Tacky since he's such a whackadoodle penguin character. They also loved our penguin egg race! They discovered it's not as easy as it looks.




I also always teach my American symbols unit these months. With so much going on lately, I am behind! However, so far we have learned about the American flag, bald eagle, red rose, and Statue of Liberty. I love love love love teaching about the Statue of Liberty. We watch youtube videos, Brainpop movies, look through real pictures, use props to make it memorable. We even have our own American symbols notebooks that we use after learning about a symbol. They consist of review questions, non-fiction information, and coloring pages. I will have to update with more fun America pics as we continue through the unit :)