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February is full of different celebrations. Groundhog Day is the start of these events. In our part of the world, the groundhog forecast was for an early spring. So far it is definitely seeming to be so. We have had beautiful sunny days and mild temperatures. Flowers are starting to bloom and the campfires are becoming a regular occurrence on the beaches. At school, we took some time to look at what the groundhog predictions were and then we played some sight word bingo with the groundhog sight word cards and the spring nouns cards. 
My kids love playing games and I try to use a variety of themes to reinforce the same skills or concepts. I have created many different themed Dolch sight words sets so it never becomes "old" for them. These sight words and bingo cards are available in my TPT store. 
I combined the Spring Dolch nouns with the Groundhog Dolch sight words to do sentence building. It was a hit. It was interesting to see all the different ways they used the cards that were given to them. I wish I had taken more pictures so I could share them with you. After the sentence games, I handed out the noun bingo cards and the sight word bingo cards and they played with them.
Valentine's Day is another big celebration in February. We didn't have much time to devote to this because of other activities happening, but we did spend the morning doing Valentine themed activities. Of course, handing out and receiving valentines is a big part of the celebration, so we had to have a special place to put them.
Buddy classes combined to make these special bags, and they were so cute, a colleague and I had to join in on the fun. Each class did them a bit differently, but it was fun to see these frogs hanging around in most of the primary classrooms in the school. We also had a school wide skating day. Our class went in the afternoon, so it was a bit different doing our valentines activities in the morning instead of the afternoon.
Family Day is a fairly new holiday for us in BC. We had February 9 off to spend with families. It was nice to take a break and just enjoy family and friends for a day.
Writing is a big focus at this time of the year. We are currently working on writing stories and developing writing skills. Here are some samples of what we have been doing. 
We have been learning about the parts of speech. We decided to practice using adjectives, nouns, and verbs to create silly sentences. Each child chose 5 adjectives, 5 nouns, and 5 verbs. I compiled them and typed them out on individual strips. Then each child was given random adjectives, nouns, and verbs. They illustrated each word and here are the results. We will be putting them together as a flip book after they come off the bulletin board. 
Coming up with descriptive language that is precise and creates images is tricky for young kids. I decided to try and get them to come up with single words that would describe things. Then we combined them to create poems. They were excited to see the diamond shape of the poems. The kids enjoyed trying these out after we did some class examples. Here are some of our "diamond" poems.
Here is a picture of my set from home.
The Lunar New Year was the focus on Thursday afternoon. This is a big celebration in many parts of the world. Here in North America, most people think of it as Chinese New Year, but because my daughter-in-law is Korean, I prefer to think of it in broader terms. The Lunar New Year is an important celebration there too.
A few years ago, I learned to play a game that is played by many families in Korea. It is called "yut". When I was in Korea, I bought some sets for my class. We played the game on Thursday afternoon. My grandson knows the game well and he was able to help the other students with the rules. I wish I had pictures, but I was busy playing with a couple of students.
Well, I hope you enjoyed my update for February. March is going to be a blur of excitement as well. We will be celebrating 100s day, St. Patrick's Day, spring, and also doing our student-led conferences.
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Our class just celebrated the end of our space unit with a huge display of projects that represented what was learned. The children were so excited to see what each one had created and to ask questions about them. The parents were amazed at the variety of projects and the information that the students shared.
They had a choice of using a model, postcards, invitations, or essays for their projects. Here are pictures of them. A couple of children were sick, so their projects are missing. If you would like to find out more about the project criteria and other materials used, click here.
We began our study with a variety of materials and books that I had on hand.
Research was a big part of the learning. I divided the class into groups and each group had to research one inner and one outer planet. They became the experts and then they shared what they had learned with the rest of the class. It was cute to see them use the space language and share their knowledge with the others. They took it very seriously.
The class had lots of fun making the moon phases out of cookies. The best part was being able to eat them when they were done.
Check out the alien spaceships that we made from paper plates and slurpee covers.
Try out some of these ideas. I can guarantee your students will be engaged and learn a lot. My class has a huge range this year and even my students that really struggle did well with this unit.
I can hardly believe we are already at the end of January. It seems it was New Year's Eve just a few days ago. So many things have happened this month, I will need to write more than one post just to share it all.
I want to start with our New Year's celebration. Here are some pictures of our first days back.
The kids were very excited to see blowers and hats and other festive materials when they arrived back after the Christmas break. We took time to share what we had done during our winter break, and then we did some group photo booth pictures.
Instead of writing out resolutions and goals, we focused more on what we did during out winter break. We also did do some New Year's journals and writing, but we mostly focused on various different winter themes.
I finally got a chance to try out Susanna's art project. She has a tutorial on her blog at Whimsy Workshop. I was very pleased with the results and my kids loved doing it.
We finished our solar system unit and we had a big celebration to share the projects we created to show what we had learned. We did so many things during this unit, that I need to write a separate post to tell you all about it.
Lots of other things happened this month as well, but I will leave you with these things for now. I hope that your January was fabulous as well.
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About Me Charlene Sequeira
I am a wife, mother of 4, grandmother of 9, and a retired primary and music teacher. I love working with kids and continue to volunteer at school and teach ukulele. 
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