Love Monster and Other Valentine Centers

It's Valentine box time ...

For the past four years, I've done THIS for Valentine boxes. So I wanted to try something different. I had kids make love monster bags, based on the story Love Monster by Rachel Bright. The story is geared for younger kids, but my kids still loved the message. You can also click HERE to watch the story being read aloud. I got THIS from TPT for the template. They turned out so cute! I let kids choose a variety of neon colors for all the various parts, and I told them they could add eyelashes if they wanted to make girl monsters. Here's how they turned out!

I also threw together some quick Valentine centers to review skills we've already learned. This weeks centers include:

1) Valentine Hearts Puzzle and Valentine's Hearts in Boxes - These are two math activities I found on TPT. They require problem solving skills as well as guess-and-check strategies. The kids loved them.

2) A Sweet Story - I found THIS graphic organizer on TPT and put it in a bin with the story I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Rose. The kids had to sequence the events in the story onto the organizer.

3) Fun Packet - THESE are activities I found on TPT. I included the word search, making words with "Valentine" and the "I Love Addition" page. These types of activities are always favorites.

 4) Love Wins - I put THIS graphic organizer in a bin with the story Love, Splat. Kids read the story with a partner and filled out the graphic organizer depicting the friendship in the book.

5) Make Valentines - Click HERE to see how I set up my Valentine center.

Groundhog Day Activities

I have a confession ... I actually get really excited for Groundhog Day. I think it's because ever since I was young I bought into the whole "maybe he won't see his shadow and spring will start tomorrow" idea. So, for me, Groundhog Day is my first ray of hope that our brutal Kansas City winter is almost over. (Nevermind the fact that Groundhog almost always sees his shadow.)

This year, I wanted to help the kids get into the spirit by picking new activities to do in the morning. Here's what we did today to commemorate the day.

Kids were allowed to work on THIS and THIS as early finishers activities. One allows them to use their doodling and coloring skills to color in a groundhog, and the other is a blank hundreds chart where they have to locate numbers using their skip counting skills to color. Here are samples of the completed pieces (sorry for the sideways pictures ... no amount of "rotating" is actually correcting them).

I start the actual lesson by reading "Groundhog Gets a Say". I've always read this to my class on Groundhog Day because it is funny, and it is full of facts about groundhogs. Click HERE to buy it through Scholastic and to see other fun Groundhog Day books.

 

Afterward, I had kids use the new facts they learned and finish a "I Am a Groundhog" writing and craft activity that I got HERE on TPT. It causes them to use their newfound knowledge and creativity to complete sentence starters about groundhogs. I have two copies of the book, so kids were allowed to share those to go back and pick facts for their writing. Also, I have a QR code of this book that I got from THIS listening center bundle on TPT. Several kids opted to listen to the story on their iPads to narrow down their facts.

For the craft, I changed a couple of things. We changed the arms to dark brown so they could be distinguished from the body. Also, I don't know if it's the changing temperature in our hallway/sunlight exposure, but any time I glue "things" to craft projects (like googly eyes, or chicklet teeth, for example) they fall off and we end up putting tape over them. This does not look good, so we just made everything out of paper (whiskers, teeth, eyes, etc). I found standard eyes online that we used. Also, we mounted them on red paper because everything is Valentines-y around our room right now and I wanted to continue with that vibe. Here's how they turned out!

When all was said and done, we watched today's VIDEO of the groundhog finding his shadow. You could easily do this before all your activities to get them excited. We did it more as a wrap-up from our morning writing activity.

Happy Groundhog Day!