Snow Many Winter Teaching Ideas!

It’s already February and for some of you the end of winter may be in sight, but here in Wisconsin, spring doesn’t usually show up until late April at the earliest. So I’m still all about those snowmen, penguins and fun winter holidays that February brings. I’m teaming up with some teaching friends to bring you a great blog hop full of winter teaching ideas for every topic you can think of along with a FREE winter eBook with great print and go resources you can use right away! And don’t miss the giveaway too for your chance to stock up on more great resources for your classroom 🙂

I love flipping my calendar over to February because it means I don’t have to hide my Valentines decorations any longer. (I totally put them up right after taking the Christmas ones down…) A whole holiday revolving around love, kindness and cute little hearts makes me smile so I usually try to incorporate fun themed activities for a week or two before the big day. Here are my 5 Engaging Valentines Day Ideas to Try in Your Classroom.

This game is super simple and takes very little prep time. First grab a bunch of construction paper in different colors and cut out at least enough large hearts for your class. Then write a sight word on the back of each heart. Flip the hearts over and lay them on the floor in a circle. Then blast your class’ favorite jam and they walk/dance around the circle stepping on the hearts. When you stop the music they stop moving and pick up their heart. You can go around the circle and have everyone read their word or have them read it to a partner, whatever works for you. I like the partner option because it’s much faster and they get more practice in. I just try to listen in to my special friends that need it to see how they are doing with reading the words. You could really modify this game for ANY skill you’re working on.

Just a few other ideas: letters (practice naming or sounds), CVC words, colors, shapes, numbers, even/odd, counting on (4,5, ?), counting back (9, 8, ?), addition, subtraction, etc.

Another fun and active game I adapt to fit lots of different themes throughout the year are relay races. For this heart relay, I split the class into a few teams of about 3-4. Then each team gets a cup full of conversation hearts with a spoon. At the other end of the classroom/hall or other open area I place an empty cup for each team. When I say go, the 1st member from each team scoops as many hearts as they can onto their spoon and then carries them to their cup on the other end and dumps them in before running back to tag the next person. They come up with all kinds of great strategies, like carrying less but running, or carrying more, but being careful not to drop any. I give the race a time limit, say 1-2 minutes and then yell stop!

Here is where the learning come in. 😉 The teams must then work together to count how many hearts they managed to get into their cup. They can work together however they’d like to count them, but eventually they usually figure out to make groups of ten and then skip count to make it faster.

I love giving out treats for special days in my classroom. Pretty sure food is my love language! These treats are super simple. Start by filling snack sized bags with goldfish. I like the cupcake variety personally but whatever floats your boat! Or sometimes I’ll make a little snack mix by adding marshmallows, M&Ms, and other valentines candies. Then print, cut out, and staple the treat toppers to each one and you are good to go! If you can’t or don’t want to pass out food in your classroom you can just print the little cards and write a sweet note to your kiddos instead. Click here or the image above to grab your FREE printables.

Another one of my favorite games to play is BINGO. I love how easily BINGO makes practicing any skill fun. Sight words are a big push at this point in the year as they are key to early reading success with little leveled books. So I created this Valentines BINGO game as part of my Seasons of Love Math and Literacy Pack It also includes BINGO boards for letter ID, letter sounds, number ID, addition, and subtraction along with 10 other activities to keep your students engaged in meaningful work around the Valentines holiday. You can see the whole pack here:

Themed Skill Practice

I’m not big on worksheets, but sometimes you have five minutes left before lunch, need to reinforce a skill, aren’t sure if the class “gets it” yet, or just need a few minutes of quiet so you can get things ready for the next fabulous lesson you have planned. That is usually when I pull out a skill based worksheet and it’s so much better if I can find one that is themed and engaging for my students. That’s where this FREE eBook comes to the rescue. Check out all the amazing winter themed goodies inside like this Valentines “Skip a Beat” Skip counting page (also from my Seasons of Love pack)