When to Use a Capital Letter

One of the skills assessed on the MAP Test is use of a capital letter. Students have to find the word or words in a sentence that needs to be capitalized. Here is a quick and easy center activity to practice capital letters.

Write a sentence on a laminated sentence strip and leave off some capital letters (beginning of sentence, I, names, days of week, etc.) Using vis-a-vis pens, have the students re-write the sentence using capital letters in the correct places. Place an anchor chart in the center for support. 

Introduce the activity through whole group, using a pocket chart or on the easel with a chart tablet. Once students show understanding, transition the lesson to the writing center for some independent extra practice.

Taken from Tunstalls Teaching Tidbits

Library Thing

Have you ever tried to remember the titles of books you have to go with a certain theme or skill? Now you can with LibraryThing - an online library catalog system.

What is it?

• Join the world’s largest book club.
• Catalog your books from Amazon, the Library of Congress and 700 other world libraries. Import from anywhere.
• Find people with eerily similar tastes.
• Find new books to read.
• Free Early Reviewer books from publishers and authors
• Enter 200 books for free, as many as you like for $10 (year) or $25 (life).
• Available in many languages

After signing up, you add your books and tag them with topics relevant to your classroom. Books can be added manually or through the Library Thing Barcode Scanner ($15). Whenever you are looking for a book on a particular topic, simply go to your "Tags" page and click on that tag. For example, if you are looking for a book on winter, click on the winter tag and you can see all of your classroom books on winter. 

Snow Dough

I have 2 AMAZING recipes for Snow Dough.

Recipe 1: Snow Dough
2 cups cornstarch
1/3 to 1/2 vegetable oil or baby oil
3 - 4 Tbsp of silver glitter

Mix ingredients until combined. It should feel smooth, slightly damp, and mold easily.

Recipe 2: Snow Playdough

2 cups cornstarch

1 cup salt

1 1/2 boiling water

2 Tbsp cream of tartar

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

silver glitter

Mix all ingredients until well combined.

What they are learning as they play:

Sensory: exploring through sensory investigation, learning new descriptive language

Literacy: story telling, vocabulary development

Science/ Knowledge & Understanding of the World: combining materials, recipes, geography and habitats

Creativity: imaginative play, forming sculptures

Maths: counting out measurements

Cute Bulletin Board Idea

A FB friend posted her bulletin board from her classroom. She is a CD teacher in Florence School District 3. The students created self portraits "catching snowflakes". Then they wrote about snowflakes; how they feel and look.  Love this idea! Thanks Teresa Cusaac.

Thoughtful Thursday: Play and Language

In their book, From Play to Practice, Marcia Nell and Walter Drew shared these observations on play and language:

"People communicate ideas or information with others in a variety of ways.  Language is the most common tool used during this shared meaning-making process.  Sometimes, however, there are language barriers that hinder the process of communication, such as when people do not speak the same language or a person has special needs that limit the sharing of thoughts with others.  For children, play supplies a context to overcome these types of communication barriers.

"When children are learning a second language, they are actually acquiring two types of language.  The first type is called... cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP).  This is the language used in textbooks and classroom settings.  The second type, called basic interpersonal communication skills (BISC), is the language children use in social situations, such as on the playground or with their friends....  Play can aid in the acquisition of social language skills, which enables dual language learners to interact with their peers while they continue to acquire the academic language skills necessary for learning and participating in classroom activities.  During social play with peers, children surmount language barriers by using gestures or other nonverbal cues in order to continue the play.  It is play's intrinsic motivation that enables children who speak different languages to continue their play experiences and to share meaning."

Winter Math Activities

Great Resource for some "Snow" much fun math activities.

Check this out:"Snow" Much Fun Math Activities

Winter Animals Videos

I came across this site and it has wonderful you tube videos on Polar Bears and Penguins.
Thought you could use this if you talk about animal habitats in the winter.

Enjoy.

 Winter Animal Videos