The winter season. A season not for the faint of heart. Between the cold and kids spending an hour putting on and taking of layers and ALL.THE. HOLIDAYS, it’s no wonder by the end of February teachers are looking a little bit more haggard. Being someone who is akin to Elsa, the cold never bothered me anyway, so I am here with some quick activities to make the winter season more tolerable.
The one piece of advice I can not stress enough, have fun and work smarter, not harder. The holiday season can be fun, yet also educational for students. If you are looking for even LESS stress, be sure to check out my Winter No Prep and Digital unit!
After moving from the midwest to Arizona, I learned to appreciate winter and snow. One of my favorite units I have made is my Winter NO PREP and Digital Unit. Sledding, making snowmen, having snowball fights….oh how I miss it! I wanted to relive my childhood and basically lived vicariously through this unit.
Students will practice many different concepts such as alphabetical order, fractions, 2-digit addition and subtraction, creating and using contractions, adding coins, context clues, synonyms and antonyms, word problems, and much more!
Winter ELA Activities
After reading the words on the snowman, students will put all of the words in alphabetical order.
Teaching suffixes during the season doesn’t have to be hard. Students will color ice blocks either purple or blue based on whether the word ends with the suffix “less” or “ness”.
Snowball synonyms is a great way for students to review synonyms. This is a way for them to think of synonyms for commonly used words to enhance their vocab and writing!
Contractions don’t have to be hard or boring to teach. With Skate around the contractions, students will read the words on the ice and then create contractions using two words. They will also practice using the contractions in a sentence.
Teaching students about a piece of writing’s purpose can be a bit challenging for younger grades. With Polar Purpose they will read short sentences and then circle the correct purpose that the sentence was trying to convey. After practicing finding the purpose of each sentence, students will then write a short letter persuading their parent or guardian to let them have a penguin as a pet! This is also a fun way for them to practice letter writing by using correct formatting and commas.
Winter Math Activities
Students will practice adding 2 digit numbers and then coloring the ice block based on if the answer is even or odd. This is a fun addition practice because kids love to color!
If you are looking for a fun way for students to practice adding two 2 digit addition problems Snowman Spinner is a fun math activity. Using a pencil and paperclip to make a spinner, students will practice adding 2 digit numbers. Another way to make this even more challenging is to set a timer and have them try and make and solve as many equations as they can in that amount of time.
Students will have fun practicing fractions with Frosty Fractions. After reading what fraction to shade in, they will color the fraction.
Snowball sums is a math activity that is great practice for adding 2 digit numbers with some regrouping. As they solve each answer, they will find the corresponding snowball and color it in.
Snowed in a fun winter math graphing activity where students will graph the number of how many inches per day it snowed.
These pages and many more are included in my Winter NO PREP and Digital Unit. There are plenty of math and ELA activities that can be used for homework, morning work, review, early finishers, indoor recess, sub plans, and even more! Perfect for surviving the winter season as a teacher!
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