Wednesday, February 12, 2014

February Fun!

February is FULL of lesson ideas and fun little holidays.  I love taking out my old teacher materials and using them with my children.  I was fortunate enough to inherit many fun reproducibles and other materials from my amazing teacher friend and mentor from my public school teaching experience in Maryland.  So without further ado, here are some pictures and lesson ideas for all things February.



Valentines' Day

Every year, I play Heart Bingo with my children.  This is one of the many materials I inherited from my dear friend and mentor when she retired.  I love digging out these materials from my file cabinet each year since it helps me to remember all the good memories I have of the great friends I have made in Maryland.



Presidents' Day

One little known fact about Presidents' Day is that no one really knows where to put the apostrophe or who the holiday actually honors.  Nonetheless, it is a great time to teach social studies, obviously.  I always focus on Lincoln and Washington since their birthdays are in February.  It is such a hard concept for children to grasp the concept of time and those who came before them.  With that in mind, I always emphasize who our current president is and how there are many who lived before us.  They always like to look at their pictures on the coins since we are typically learning coins and counting money this time of year, anyway.

Emmett was happy to put the penny on his nose.  


Groundhog Day

We have so much fun with Groundhog Day.  I have no idea why.  I guess nothing says fun more than a groundhog in a hole.  I make a big deal about it every year.  We talk about the groundhog, his name, where he is from and so on.  It is actually a great opportunity to talk about tradition and fun versus actual science and meteorology.  Although sometimes with the wacky weather predictions, one would think they only consult a groundhog!  We also tie in science by discussing shadows, placement of the sun and time of day.  This year, we used a flashlight to represent the sun to make a shadow on a paper groundhog and predicted what time of day is was based on where the flashlight was.  We also measured the length of the shadow.      

Of course, we can't forget the best February fun, which is Emmett's birthday!
After Carmen told me all about flowers and rainbows, I got her to explain that the Groundhog did not see his shadow. :)

Black History Month

I have so many reproducibles for Black History Month. Every year I break them out and we do a few more.  It is fun just taking a break from regular schoolbooks and schedules in order to do some fun papers.  Below is a little maze where we have to get the slaves to freedom!








The Winter Olympics!

Well, this year we have the winter Olympics.  It has been fun studying flags of the countries and the different sports. However, it is also a way to stay up past

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