Bedroom

Vocabulary: big bed, small bed, dresser, blanket and pillow
Language targets: she, on, and under

Show the students the bedroom items and review the names of the bedroom items. Have a small toy doll (girl). Go around the group giving individual students directions "Put the doll on the big bed."
Then ask the student, "Where is she?"
S: She is on the big bed. 

I have very different language levels in my room this year. So the targets are not always the same. For my higher kids, I am looking for "she is on the bed." for my lower language kids I am looking for "on" Mostly modeled by me first. 

Going around the table give each student a chance for on and under.

Centers

Play with wooden doll house

Trace bedroom items then color. 

Around the House

Around the House!

We started the around the house unit. To open the unit I read In a People's House by Dr. Seuss*
Using doll furniture we talked about the different rooms in a house and some of the items in each room.

The vocublary for this unit is:
Bedroom: bed, dresser, pillow, and blanket.
Bathroom: Bathtub, sink, toilet, mirror, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, comb, hairbrush
Kitchen: sink, stove, mircrowave, fridge, table, and chairs
Living Room: couch (sofa), lamp, T.V.  and chair.

Last we colored and cut out the rooms in a house and glued the rooms onto construction paper.

The pictures can be found here Rooms of the house in color or Rooms of the house in black and white
The kizclub.com website has some great pictures as well for vocublary words, those can be found here Look under My House.

Centers
Watecolored pictures of houses. I used some pictures that can be found here Click on any of the pictures that fit your unit. ***I have found you need to copy the pictures onto thicker paper for watercoloring (I know sounds logically and yet I stil needed to figure it out for myself!)

Played with the doll houses.

Play in the house area (I sadly don't have a classroom big enough for one, but would love to have one!)

Hot Chocolate!

Yum. You can't have a winter unit and not have hot chocolate.

Language Goals:

My main goal with this lesson was to get the kids to tell me what to do. (I Love lessons like this!)

I had each student bring in a mug to drink from. We talked about what it was called (many of them called it a cup). We discussed that it was a mug because of the handle.

Then we talked about how the water felt. I passed around the large bowl of water (I used the large glass measuring cup from Pampered Chef). We felt the side of the bowl, is it hot or cold? Is it ready for us to drink?
They agreed it was not ready to drink! So what next? I, of course, had the microwave behind me as a clue. So we walked through all the steps. 

Open the door.

Put the bowl inside.

Close the door.

Turn it on (I Love this, one of my students told me "you have to beep beep beep it." Because that's the sounds the buttons make! To precious!!!)

Check the temperature.

While we were waiting for it to be down, we poured our hot chocolate packets in the mugs. 

I also sang a song about marshmallows in my hot chocolate, that song and other activities can be found here hot chocolate song

Then we watched a movie!! 

Centers

Paint with the ice cubes you made yesterday. Sprinkle Kool-Aide onto a piece of paper and spread it around with the ice cube. As the ice cube melts it will paint the paper.

Footprint Penguin

I saw one that involved painting your foot and it was super cute, but I don't have sink in my classroom so I wasn't brave enough. I found another one that involved tracing your shoe. I went with that one!

I have included the links to both. You choose!!

Shoe Tracing Penguin

Painted foot Penguin

Big vs. Small Snowmen

Language Goals

Expressive Language: big, small, that, Medium (if students are ready for it)

Receptive Language: Is questions

Have a variety of snowmen big and small cut out in different colors. I put mine in a guess bag for the kids to reach in and draw one out (they love it!). Set two hula hoops on the floor. Label one hoop big and one hoop small. Do an example of each. 

Call each student up one at a time to reach into the guess bag and pull out a snowman. 

T: Is that snowman big or small?

S: That snowman is big

Put it in the big hula hoop

Once all the snowmen have been sorted, introduce the medium sized snowman. Show the students it isn't big or small, but that its between the sizes (I put it between the two hula hoops). See if students remember the word (I taught it during our pumpkin unit). Add the medium snowmen to the bag and pick up the big and small snowmen. Repeat the lesson. 

 

Centers

Color and cut the snowmen used for the language lesson. Glue the snowmen in order of size. 

Poke snowmen with a golf tee (have a simple picture of a snowman copied on white paper, tape this to a piece of construction paper and poke the outlines with a golf tee. The picture shape comes through on the construction paper).

Hot vs. Cold

Language Goals

Expressive Language: hot, cold, that

Receptive Language: Is questions

Have an example of something that is hot and something that is cold. I used a mug of warm water and and ice pack. Pass each around and discuss how each one feels when touched. 

Next, sort items into either the hot pile or the cold pile. Have students draw a picture and ask them:

T: Is the ____________ hot or cold? (Can say Is that hot or cold? depending on your targets)

S: The ______________ is hot. 

Continue around the group until all the pictures have been sorted. 

I used the pictures from a file folder game found at filefolderfun.com

It can be found here Hot vs. Cold

Last, make ice cubes. I took my students down to the freezer for this part of the lesson. Everyone had a chance to feel the inside of the freezer and we talked about how it felt. Then I poured the water into the ice cube tray and we talked about what might happen to the water if I put it in the freezer. I also covered the ice cube tray with cling wrap and poked toothpicks in to make "Popsicles" for the next day.

Centers

Using eye droppers, have the students fill an ice cube tray (great fine motor!!)

We also made marshmallow snowmen. I drew 3 circles onto a piece of blue paper (I used the circle cutters from Creative Memories to trace). Then the students glued mini marshmallows on the lines to make a snowman. We added arms, a face and buttons too! Super cute. 

Snowmen on a hill

Langauge Goals

Expressive Language: up and down.

Receptive Language: Is questions and how many questions

I had 5 felt snowmen that I used for this activity. I cut a piece of white felt into the shape of a hill and put this on the felt board. I then modeled for the students the snowmen going up the hill and down the hill (making sure to articulate what the snowmen were doing).

Next, I would walk a snowman up the hill and ask a student:

T: Is the snowman walking up the hill or down the hill?
S: The snowman is walking up the hill (or just "up the hill" depending on the student's language)

Do this with each student mixing up the snowmen going either up the hill or down the hill.

Next, make different number of snowmen go up or down the hill

T: How many snowmen are going up the hill?
S: Three snowmen are going up the hill. (or "3 snowmen up hill", again depending on language levels)

Last, give each student a direction

T: Put 4 snowmen up the hill.

The student should carry out the action

T: How many snowmen are up the hill?

S: 4 snowmen are up the hill!

Centers

I let the students play with the felt board activity from the language lesson.

Gym Games

On Fridays we go into the gym for some gross motor play. Today our play revolved around the winter theme.

Paper plate Skating Relay Race

Divide the class into equal teams. Give each team a pair of "ice skates" (the cheap white paper plates). Then have each team line up, one member from each team will "put on" the ice skates and skate across the floor and back (we did half of the gym). Trade off the ice skates to the next team member. Repeat till everyone has had a chance to ice skate. 

**Make sure to bring your camera it is so cute to watch the kids!

Snowball Scoop

In the same teams as the ice skating relay race, send one team to each corner of the gym. Give each team a bucket and something to scoop the snowballs with. This could be a shovel, a spoon, anything really. We used paper plates again. Throw snowballs around the gym (we used white Styrofoam balls) and have the students pick up the snowballs and carry them back to the bucket without touching the snowball with their hands. One team member from each team goes at the same time. When all the snowballs are picked up, have each team count how many snowballs they have.

Parachute fun.

Put the same white Styrofoam balls in the parachute and play!

Sledding!

Today the word of the day was sledding. I had planned to take the kids outside and actually go sledding but alas the Michigan weather did not want to cooperate (it was January in Michigan I naviely thought we would have snow!!! Oh well). I found a cute sledding craft online and it gave me the opportunity to introduce the concept of up and down.

I made a teacher example first of the activitiy and used that to teach the lesson. Then I let the kids make their own. Again, I forgot the cotton balls, so we used marshmallows. :)

Language Goals
Expressive: up and down
Receptively: Is questions

I started the lesson by having everyone stand up and then squat down to the floor. We did this a few times talking about being up and down. Then I had one student stand up while the other students stayed down and asked another student "Who is up?" I went around the group till everyone had a turn and then repeated with down.

Next, I got out my cute sledder and put him in different positions, either up or down. Asking the students "Is he up the hill or down the hill?"  I was looking for just the pharse "up the hill" or "down the hill" from each student. If your kiddos have more language, of course expect  more from them. After each student had one or two turns. I let the students  make their own, great cutting skills. Then I would tell them where to put the sledder, either up the hill or down the hill. 

**Note** I taped a small craft stick to the back to make the sledder more stable and it seemed to help.

Sled craft

Winter Centers

Torn winter scene
For this center, have a blue piece of construciton paper as the background. Then give the students a white piece of paper to rip in half. This will be the ground. Glue on the bottom. Rip the remaining half into small pieces for the snow. Glue in the sky like snow falling.

For Math today we used Snowmen counting sheet and counted out "snowballs" to a given number. I held up a number between 1-8 (these are the numbers we have been working on, the sheets go up to 10). I gave each student a handful of marshmallows for snowballs. I did an example and had the students try to match.
Snowman counting There are also sheets that go up to 20 and ones with penguins on it!! Lots of other goodies at this site too.