Winter Week

We had a lot of fun the last 2 weeks learning about winter. Too bad it was so bitterly cold and nasty outside that we never actually got to go outside and enjoy some snow. Oh well. Here are some of our Winter Week highlights: 
Art
Epsom Salt Painting
 
The kids drew snowy scenes on black paper with white crayons, then painted over them with an Epsom Salt/water mixture. They were so excited to come back and see their crystals. They turned out pretty cool! They were all so different since each bowl on the table had a little different amount of salt in the water.

Frozen Paint 
 
They LOVED this! We had talked the days before about things being frozen, then melting, and they loved having frozen, cold paint. It kind of colored like a crayon on the first few pictures, then as it melted, turned more into a liquid. They were talking about why it was melting and changing and it was a great integration of science in art. As the sticks fell off, most of the kids lost interest and went on to play elsewhere, but I had one girl stay all day! She turned it into finger painting, and I got her some regular brushes. Soon, the kids saw how much fun she was having and joined back in. We had some messy messy kids, but it was great fun and I was glad to have it be extended since we haven't had outside time. :(

Insta-Snow
I brought this back from our Arctic Animals week and it was a hit!

Math
Snowman Button Counting
 
I had these snowman cards 1-30 from Kinder, and pulled out the 1-10 for these kids. Their hats have a number and the kids place buttons on the snowman to match the number. I added the dots on the snowmen to help them count since they need more help with tracking at this age.

Snowflake Flyswatter Game
 
We did this game for large group, then it was out and the kids played it on their own the next 2 days. I showed a card with the number, and they had to find it and hit it with the fly swatter. Pretty easy, but the fly swatter part makes it a lot of fun for them. It was fun watching them play it on their own and taking turns being the teacher and showing the cards.
 
Pegs and Puzzles


I think it's pretty self-explanatory for how cool these puzzles are for teaching numbers and their meaning.   
The boys used the pegs to make light sabers and fought instead. Oh well, at least they used them.
Mitten Clothesline
Didn't get pictures, but I had paper mittens that are laminated and have numbers and letters on them, each set is a different color. The kids put them on the clothesline in numerical and alphabetical order. It's great practice in number and letter recognition and ordering, plus great small motor exercise, using the clothespins.
 

Other
Vocab
We learned the word "coniferous" and sorted pictures of trees by coniferous and deciduous. They are understandably not great at pronouncing the words, but they know what they mean!
We also reviewed our other vocabulary words from the past 3-4 weeks and added them to our Word Wall. They are great at finding the letters where the new words go and love helping add them to the wall.
Science
We did a lot of science this week in talking about winter. We talked about frozen solid things, and liquid things. We collected snow outside, made observations about how it looked and felt (and tasted because we're 3 and have to still taste things I guess). We then made predictions about what would happen to it in front of our heater. We also let some melt in our hands and noticed that our warm hands made the snow turn into water. Our can of snow also melted into water, due to heat. These lessons seem so simple to us, but it's so fun to see these discoveries through the eyes of 3-year-olds. They were seriously impressed with this lesson, and then stoked to see frozen paint and were just sure it would melt in our warm classroom. These scientists are smart!
We also did another Venn diagram, comparing summer and winter. They sure are looking forward to some warm weather fun!
Music
We sang a lot of fun songs too! We threw snowflakes all over and sang "Snow is Falling" and did their favorite one over and over, "Once There was a Snowman." Here's the lyrics to both in case you need them:
Snow is Falling
Snow is falling all around,
on the rooftops, on the ground.
Snow is falling on my nose,
on my head, and hands and toes.

Once There was a Snowman
Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman,
Once there was a snowman, tall, tall tall.
In the sun he melted, melted, melted,
in the sun he melted, small, small, small.