I is for igloo

I decided to read Jan Brett's The Three Snow Bears today to go along with our I is for igloo theme.  Cute book, I love the illustrations best.  The endings of these retakes of the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears tend to leave me hanging a bit.  I don't always agree with how they end.  :-)  Still a worthwhile read!

I simply scanned images from the book that went along to create a retelling activity.

Long I-Short I

A very simple activity to create.  :-) 

I folded two pieces of l2x18 white construction paper in half (together), cut the basic igloo shape, cut the top layer on the fold to make "doors", stapled the two igloos together, and added the few details there were.  K. cut out the Long I-Short I pictures.  She glued the labels in the igloo and then glued the pictures on the correct side of the igloo.  The short /i/ sound is a bit difficult for her to remember yet.  She gets it confused with short /e/, understandably.  So we've been doing quite a bit with short vowel sounds the last little while.  The Long and Short Vowel sort pages can be found at http://firstgradealacarte.blogspot.com/2011/11/e-i-o-u-sorts.html

Measuring Igloos

We've done quite a bit with nonstandard measurement and using a ruler such as this (Print Shop) helps the children to transition from nonstardard measurement to "real" measuring with a rule.  After estimating how many penguins wide each igloo was, she measured with the ruler and seriated.  Then she was welcome to take the ruler around to measure other things she could find.  (If I hadn't created this activity BEFORE I had decided what book I was doing...I would have used polar bears instead of penguins.  :-p)

Cool Colors Painting

A nice open ended art activity-painting on aluminum foil.  I cover a piece of cardboard (cereal box cardboard works great) with aluminum foil and tape at the back.  When we paint on aluminum foil, I add dishsoap...this helps the paint stick to the foil and not flake quite as much.  Also gives it a shiny, smooth look, at least while they are painting with it.  :-) 

We've been talking a bit about seasons the last few weeks and so we started this activity reminding ourselves what a color wheel looks like.  (There are many different types of color wheels.  I like to use the simple six color color wheel with preschoolers.)  I cut the wheel in half, in front of the children, keeping one half warm colors and one half cool colors.  Then we talked about what each half reminded us of.  Summer colors or winter colors.  Worked perfectly!  Led right into the discussion of the warm and cool colors and how where there are igloos it's "winter-y" feeling out...cold...cool.  So I provided the cool colors- blue, green, and purple- for them to paint with.  Just to encourage noticing detail and conversation I gave K. a small, medium and large paintbrush.  :-)  She loved that little one!

Sugar Cube Exploration

Decided to have my husband pick up sugar cubes for this week as it is similar to blocks of ice/snow that would have been used for igloos.  They built with them for a bit.

Then I gave them colored water and eye droppers.  :-)  K. kept telling me, "It's going down!"  "It's timbering!" (My personal favorite.), "Oh, Ms. Amber...remember when we did D is for Dissolve?"  BINGO! 

Will let these be all for now.  Will share what we did with our I vocab cards in another blog.  Hope you have a lovely week!