More Winter Fun!

Just a couple more things that we have done for our unit on winter and snow...

Have you ever made winter snowflakes using borax?  It is pretty easy and the kiddos always get a kick out of it.  It is a project that needs adult supervision, because you use very hot water with the borax.   I have been doing it for years with my kindergarten students and have never had any safety issues.  I have an adult mix up the borax and hot water in big buckets or tubs.  I have never used an exact recipe, but you want the solution to become totally saturated with borax.  We used about 1-2 cups of borax per gallon of water.   The children make the snowflakes using pipe cleaners and we help tie one end to a string.  Then we tie the other end of the string to rulers or anything else that you can set on top of the buckets.  Dunk the pipe cleaners into the borax solution and leave them overnight or longer. 
Here are mine sitting in the solution:

I got my whole class done in two tubs this size.   It is a quick and fairly easy small group or center activity.  Then you can have the kids write about how they did it, or how beautiful and sparkly the snowflake is.  Or, you can just put them up in your classroom and enjoy them!  

Have fun with this one!

This is another fun and engaging math lesson that can be incorporated into many different thematic units.  If your school has pattern block die cuts, you can use them for little art projects and then have students graph how many they used for their picture.  I have done this activity in brown for Gingerbread, and with lots of colors for spring/garden.  You could do an abstract geometric design for any math lesson.  This could be done with actual pattern blocks, or the stickers if you have them.  Some classrooms have puzzle frames, you could do a puzzle and then graph.  This is a great way to review shapes, counting, number, and of course, graphing concepts throughout the year.  This project makes a nice bulletin board as well.  If you would like to use these graph masters in your classroom you can find them at my Teachers Pay Teachers store, just click on the image or link below:

Graph-for-Pattern-Blocks

Happy Teaching everyone!