So folks, it is hard to believe but it is 2016! Happy New Year! And here in New England, we finally got our first snow of the season – which is a welcome change from last year when we got foot upon foot (upon foot…) of snow. So much snow that some schools went to school until June 29 and June 30. In any case, I thought it was time to share some fun teaching ideas for when you get back to school.
There are a lot of terrific ideas out there from other bloggers and of course when I looked, tons on Pinterest. I only will post ideas that we can attribute to someone specific so they get credit. I also have a few ideas of my own, and if you follow to the end, there is a FREEBIE for you that you can use when you get back to school on Monday. I have joined up with some other teacher bloggers from I Teach Second. Be sure to head down to see who else linked up at the end of this post and when you click over to their blogs, they may have some fun ideas and freebies too! AND you can enter to win a $25 TPT GIFT CARD at the end of this post! Yay!!!
Jen at Kitchen Counter Chronicle has a great post with an idea on an activity to go along with learning how snowflakes form. The activity combines science, art, and even math to make learning fun and she has some good book suggestions too.
Over at Deep Space Sparkle , there are some great ideas for teaching students to illustrate and draw winter cardinals! The collage includes cardinals done by 2nd and 3rd graders! Wow!
Growing a Jeweled Rose has an amazing
resource of TONS of winter science
experiments. You know, I always
believe in not reinventing the wheel,
so head over there to get tons of ideas
(after you read the rest of this post
though, right? And grab your freebie!)!
A Year of Many Firsts has this great activity called Catching Snowflakes. She was inspired by a lesson on Artsonia which is a fabulous website too. This one is on my list for the first day back.
Simply Second Grade always has fun ideas, and this snowman adjectives idea is fun for January!
I also found some ideas that are lesson plans or activities you can directly download and print for your kiddos. Kim Miller has a great freebie called Finding the Main Idea with Non Fiction. I love how she has students color code to show where they looked in the text to find the main idea. My students love to just “guess” without looking back, so you know I printed this out for the beginning of January.
Rachel K Tutoring Blog has some fun winter writing prompts you can download for your lesson plans this month! Cute ideas!
I do have some winter resources of my own for you! Don’t forget to scroll down for your freebie!
Perfect for when you get back after your vacation! Grab my New Year’s Rhyme Match by clicking on the name or the cover sneak peek.
Also what might be great for January is teaching Katy and the Big Snow and using it to help your students with their writing!
As I said before I love doing writing prompts with my class. I have my Winter Writing Prompt Collection and I am excited to try them when we get back!
The Story Problem Packs are always super fun and great practice. I even have an image of the Winter Story Problem Practice in action below!
Also fun for the winter, Winter Synonym Fun Game! Check it out here Winter Synonym Fun or by clicking on the image!
NOW FOR YOUR FREEBIE! It is not winter themed but I think it would come in really handy! Your students will match up subjects and predicates to make complete sentences. Grab my Subject and Predicate Match Up here or by clicking the image below. Be sure to click through and visit all the awesome second grade teachers involved in the linky and see what they have up the sleeves and grab a few freebies along the way!
