Adaptation in Winter and Making 5

Today, I posed a question to the children:  How do animals adapt in winter?  We shared out thoughts and then we read a book titled Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner to help us answer part of this question.  In this story, we learned what animals are active during the winter and what animals hibernate or are dormant during the winter. After the story, we played a movement game that had us standing for animals that are over the snow and squatting for animals/insects that are under the snow.  Then, I had the children create an animal (or insect) that you would find either over the snow or under the snow.  After coloring and cutting out their animal (or insect), they added it to our anchor chart.  This chart will be used later for an art and writing project.

In math, we've started learning about the different combinations of 5 (3+2, 4+1, 5+0, etc.).  Today, we used cubes to create those different combinations.  We also wrote equations to match those cubes.  Later this week, we will learn a new math game called Fives Up that will focus on making combinations of 5 (also known as 5 partners).