🐻❄️🦊 Animals in Winter
Wow I can't believe it's winter already! I hope you enjoy the Animals in Winter Lesson Plan! Here are some highlights:
Adaptation • Migration • Hibernation Guided Writing
AR Emperor Penguin
Short Vowel Phonics Dominoes
Subtraction Wheels
Fox and Bear Painting
States of Matter
Iceberg Animal Rescue
Over and Under the Snow Sensory Play
Winter Animal Locomotor Skills
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Enjoy! Tiff
🐻❄️🦊 Animals in Winter
Animals in Winter - Guided Writing
Writing can be intimidating for young learners. Help make it fun with this Animals in Winter themed writing pack. Learn about how animals adapt to survive the winter using different strategies such as migration, color change and hibernation. Practice handwriting while learning new vocabulary words and which animals use each strategy.
Getting Ready For Hibernation
By: SciShow Kids
Kick off your week with this great video about “Getting Ready For Hibernation”. I love introducing new scientific concepts with a video first and then reinforcing them with play, experiments and fiction/non-fiction books.
Animals With Winter Coats
By: SciShow Kids
Then learn about how other animals prepare for winter by adapting to their new environment or migrating. See how the Arctic Fox and Arctic Hare both change their fur color to match their new snowy environment.
AR Emperor Penguin
Get up close and personal with a full size emperor penguin in your living room! This amazing 3D penguin flaps its wings and opens its beak. Take a picture with it and see if you are taller than the penguin!
To check this out, just tap the link below on your smart phone. Then tap View in 3D and follow the instructions on your phone.
English Language Arts
Short Vowel Phonics Dominoes
Any game that teaches literacy is a winner in my book. This is a fun game and great tool for reinforcing short vowel sounds and practicing grouping word families. We play normal dominoes and take turns creating words until we are out of dominoes. Then we switch it up and try finding words for different word families. To my great surprise, my daughter started playing this on her own during recess.
Bob Books - Rhyming Words
We are big fans of Bob Books in this house. We had our first “I can read!” moment with these books, so they will always have a special place in our hearts.
The rhyming words set is a great way to work on phonemic awareness while practicing reading at the same time.
Reading Lessons
There are only two resources I like to make sure I include on each week’s lesson plan, Prodigies Music (below) and Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. This book has thousands of 5 star reviews on Amazon for a reason. It’s an effective, no-prep way to teach reading. We are 40 or so lessons in and I can already see a huge difference, my daughter actually sounds out the words instead of guessing.
The lessons are short (15-20min), easy to grasp and sequential. The entire lesson is scripted and color coded so it’s fool proof, just read the words in pink. It also is designed for kids that don’t know their alphabet or letter sounds yet, so you can start right away. Their claim is that after completing all 100 lessons your child will be able to read at a 2nd grade level!
Math - Subtraction
Subtraction Charts
I was excited to find this Rainbow Subtraction Chart for our morning binder. This subtraction chart has been a great way to demonstrate counting down when subtracting numbers and practice math facts. They even have blank and partially blank versions you can fill in for practice.
Seeing the equations in this format is really helping my daughter visualize number relationships.
Subtraction Wheels
We really loved the addition wheels set by Superstar Worksheets, so I thought we would reinforce the number relationships my daughter learned for addition with these great subtraction wheel worksheets.
Art and Music
Painted Fox & Bear
My girls love to paint, so I love finding new and creative ways to play with paint. For this week’s lesson, I found these awesome fox and bear wooden figures in the Target Dollar Spot. If you missed these, you can find other wooden cut-outs online.
Or just paint a fox or bear on a piece of cardstock. After painting the wood pieces, my daughter wanted to have free art time and she painted an amazing fox in the wintery woods (see pic below)!
Supplies: wooden bear cutout, wooden bear cutout (24 pack), wooden fox cutout, tempura paint, paint brushes.
Prodigies Music
Do…Re…Mi…
We love Prodigies! Prodigies Music is simply an incredible curriculum for teaching music. Ages 2-5 is the critical time to develop a life-long sense of pitch. Their curriculum is designed to develop a sense of pitch with easy to use desk bells that don’t require any tuning. They also teach piano, recorder and ukulele. Their subscription includes everything you can think of 450+ videos, worksheets, free bell mats, sheet music all color coded so it’s super easy to learn. If you don’t have an instrument they have a bunch of rhythm focused content that doesn’t require an instrument.
They have a free trial and discounts for annual memberships! Great deal! You can even check out some of their videos for free on YouTube.
Science
States of Matter Book & Video
Introduce your students to the concept of matter and it’s different states with this great Let’s Read and Find Out Science Book “What is the World Made of: All About Solids, Liquids and Gases” and this fun Dr. Bionics video. My 5 year old immediately got the concept and started naming things that were examples of the different states. Next week…experiment time!
Social Studies
Yum Box - Italy
I love that snack time is now our social studies lesson! We got our first Universal Yums subscription box this week and it was amazing.
I don’t know about you, but some days I feel like I am constantly reminding my kids to focus on the lesson. But not today! They loved taking turns picking snacks to try and rating each snack with a smiley face, frown or neutral face. Our favorite was the Novi chocolate hazlenut bar, the one we liked least was the lemon and pepper Tarallini and the weirdest were the ketchup flavored Ketchips!
I’ve been looking for a fun way to integrate more social studies into our lesson plans, so as a foodie myself this was a perfect choice. We found Italy on our globe and talked about the different regions the snacks were from. It was almost like we took a mini trip to Italy today from the comfort of our home.
Sensory Play
Iceberg Animal Rescue
Wow, my girls really loved this! Water sensory bins are always a hit at our house, but this is the first time we added ice to the mix.
They loved “setting the animals free from the ice”. My oldest, used her hands and even the sun to help melt the ice. This was a great way to talk about the states of matter and how temperature effects the state of matter.
I added some fun animal melamine sponges that I got from the Daiso dollar store. If you don’t have a Daiso in your area, just cut up a regular Magic Eraser sponge into cubes. I also added some fun giant water beads. But the best part of this bin were the ice cubes. We may need to re-freeze these animals for play another day.
Filler: water, blue food coloring, aquarium gravel rocks.
Supplies: animal figurines, sphere ice tray mold, animal melamine sponges , stackable cups and water beads.
Over and Under the Snow Sensory Bin
My girls really loved this bookish sensory play activity. First we read “Over and Under the Snow” by Kate Messner. Then we made our fake snow using 1/2 cup white conditioner to 3 cups baking soda (we did three batches). I used coconut scented conditioner so to hide the scent, I added Forest Pine essential oils.
Next, I added some bottle brush trees rolled in the snow, forest and arctic animals and snowflake confetti. We had a blast digging dens and caves for the animals to hide in or hibernate. Living in a warm climate, this was a great way to “play in the snow”. I think we’ll have to make snowmen next!
Filler: fake snow (white conditioner and baking soda), Forest Pine scent from the Holiday Essential Oils Set.
Supplies: forest animal figurines, arctic animal figurines, bottle brush trees, snowflake confetti
Arctic Animals Sensory Play
This was a fantastic way to teach about the Arctic and the different animals that live in the extreme cold.
The floating iceberg was so much fun and helped illustrate how aquatic animals swim under the ice.
Filler: water, blue food coloring, aquarium gravel rocks.
Supplies: animal figurines, stackable cups and foam block.
Physical Education
Winter Animal Locomotor Skills
This is a fun way to work on the 8 basic locomotor skills included as part of most Kindergarten physical education standards. Just pick a card, roll a dice and everyone completes that action that number of times. (i.e. Gallop like a reindeer three times).
Joy Bob the Polar Bear - Cosmic Kids Yoga
By: Cosmic Kids Yoga
Go on a yoga adventure with Joy Bob the Polar Bear in the arctic! Learn about winter animals while practicing your yoga moves and get your body moving.
If you don’t know Cosmic Kids Yoga, you have to check it out. My girls love the stories just as much as they love the yoga. They are both very active and this keeps their attention every time!
Book List
Books We Love!
- Little Kids First Big Book of Animals
- How Do Birds Find Their Way (Let’s Read and Find Out Science)
- Animals in Winter (Let’s Read and Find Out Science)
Don’t have the budget or space to get more books? The library has been pretty great for us so far, but they are sometimes out of the more popular books. One place that you can always count on to find great books is Epic Books! Try Epic Basic for FREE! You can find awesome read to me books for free, Unlimited plan includes access to 40,000+ books!
Know of any other awesome Animals in Winter themed resources? Please comment below!
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