​This week in the Beluga Classroom we continued our theme of winter activities.  Although our weather was not very cooperative, we read books about the special circumstances actually needed for snow to fall, and we looked at photographs of the many different types of beautiful snowflakes which can form. It really is amazing to look at them!!

These different themes we focus on each month or so in preschool give us terrific opportunities to teach and reinforce important literacy and mathematical concepts in fresh ways.  Here are a few of the winter-themed activities we did this week which supported the children in their mathematical learning:

• Sequencing:  We the concept of making a snowman to practice sequencing events.  While children can easily tell you how to make a snowman, this provided us with a good opportunity to practice using the words “first, next, then, and last”.  We also talked about the ordinal numbers, first, second, third, fourth.  After working together to put four pictures of building a snowman in order, each child received a paper with identical pictures to color, cut out and glue down in order on a piece of construction paper. After completing it we helped them compare the order of their pictures with the example.  Simple and fun!​

• ​Snowflake puzzles:  These puzzles help children begin to meet the Kindergarten Common Core State Standard which is to “Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size”.  Learning to recognize shapes in common objects is fun, and the puzzles are self-correcting so that children can work by themselves or in pairs to learn their shapes in a way that’s frustration-free.

• Graphing:  We did two graphing activities which the children really liked.  The first was a Winter Activity Graph.  Every child was given two post-it notes to put on the two activities they liked best, and then we talked about the results.  Children are very visually oriented, so they liked being able to see which activity got the most votes.  We also learned to use words like least and most, and phrases like fewer than, more than, and equal to describe what we saw on the graph.  We also played a Snowman graphing game as a class where we took turns rolling a cube which had various snowman parts on it, and we “raced” to see which part would make it to 10 first. You’ll be excited to know that the Button won! 😊

Math even sneaked its way into our sensory play!  These students have used beads and straws to give their snowmen’s arms AB patterns! Way to go girls!

We’re all looking forward to next week when we are hoping very much for some real snow to continue our winter theme!