January Shenanigans

I've never been a huge fan of the month of January so I have to make it extra fun for myself and for my kids! Luckily, the 100th day of school falls in January so here are some fun activities we have done this month.

100th Day of School

We had 10 different kinds of treats: cheese balls, gummi bears, chocolate chips, fruit loops, marshmallows, goldfish, m&m's, raisins, popcorn, and cocoa puffs. The cheese balls kept rolling around so I think next year I'll switch that snack for skittles! Anyway, we went one ten frame at a time adding 10 treats onto our boards. The kids did so well not sneaking any bites until we completed our boards to 100. Afterwards, I let them snack a bit and then gave them a ziploc bag to save the rest. The absolutely loved this.

For centers we rotated 5 simple activities all about the 100. They did the 100 cup stacking challenge to see how high they could stack their cups.

They illustrated to 100 by using q-tips to paint 100 gumballs.

They each practiced counting to 100 for me. If they completed the challenge, they received an award, $100, and a sticker. If they weren't able to make it to $100, they still received the sticker and money! I had to break the news to them that it is fake money!

Another challenge, the 100 building blocks challenge. They also made headbands and wrote numbers to 100 counting by 10s on the sentence strip.

I invited the first grade class over to help us write and decorate our 100 day posters. Half of my kids had "what would I do with $100" poster and some had "if I live to be 100" poster. It was so sweet and fun watching my old kids and current kids work together.

We did the 100 seconds name writing challenge. They had 100 seconds to write their names as many times as possible. The winner won with 15 times.

And then this is where I heard one of my kids yell, "This is the best day ever!" We played parachute games trying to keep 100 balls on the parachute without flying off.

And some other random goodies this month. We did a week all about snowmen and using descriptive words when writing. Here we did some tear art, finger painting, marble painting, and then wrote a sentence about our snowman. And we also talked about snow globes and what we would do if stuck inside one (basically, what would you do in the snow?).

A fun center this month was invisible magic writing. The used white crayon to write sight words and then watercolor painted to reveal each word.They found this fascinating.

 I also found some Lego alphabet cards and busted out my Legos so that they could have fun building letters and numbers. And they have become crazy good at it!

Our letter of the week was L so I got a bunch of locks and had them try to find the correct key to unlock them. They flippin loved this so much that after completion they would do it probably 4 more times until I rang the bell.

Each week we also focus on a rhyming family. This week we practiced the -op family. The kids love using alphabet magnets to try and create real words and then illustrate them. I made it a challenge that if they came up with 4 rhyming words and were able to read them, they received a sticker. They were super motivated which is what I love to see!!

So there's a summary of our January! Next focus will be all about penguins!