Measurement Fun with Christmas Trees

We completed the cutest activity today and the best part is that it incorporated measurement skills. AND it only took about 5 minutes to prepare.  A colleague of mine found it on Teaching Maddeness' blog.  CLICK HERE to view her original post, or keep reading to see what we did. If you've never read her blog and you teach 2nd grade, you've got to check it out.  Love her ideas.  

We created these adorable trees by cutting strips of construction paper into different lengths.  I simply cut the construction paper into strips that were about 1 1/2 inches wide and told my kiddos they needed to measure the strips into different lengths.  They used  a total of 8 strips and the smallest strip was 1 inch long while the longest was 8 inches long.  

I required my kiddos write the actual measurement on each strip so I could check for accuracy (this took a bit of the cuteness away, but helped me to know who knew how to measure and who didn't). 

When they were done measuring, cutting, and assembling the tree, I allowed them decorate it however they pleased.  As an extension, I had them answer the following question: 

If you have some extra time before your Christmas break, I highly suggest completing this activity.  And don't forget to check out Amanda's blog, Teaching Maddeness, too. 

Fun With Snowmen

This past week we had a lot of fun creating snowmen using a glyph and then we pretended that our snowmen ran away (they were cold and ran to the grocery store to buy hot cocoa, but on their way home, they took a wrong turn and got lost). We wrote descriptive 'Missing' flyers about our snowmen and then had our classmates read our flyers to figure out which snowman was ours. 

After we created our snowmen, we used this worksheet to write about and create a 'Missing' flyer.  

And then we pretended we were Snowmen Detectives and read our classmates' flyers and tried to figure out who's snowman was whose. 

If you're looking for a fun but still educational activity to complete this winter, I highly suggest checking out my product My Snowman is Missing. 

Not only does this product include the directions and materials needed to complete the glyph and 'Missing' flyer, but it also has extension activities to incorporate bar graphs, compound words, and using apostrophes.

I also have a similar product creating penguins.  CLICK HERE to be taken to it in my TpT STore.