12 Snow Commandments

Teachers ... you may need these today! Lots of snow out there - stay warm and dry, friends!

Happy Snow Day!
In honor of our day at home, today I am sharing one of my favorite digital resources, Wonderopolis. 

Wonderopolis is an amazing site for kids to explore wonders and ask questions. In kindergarten, we kept a Wonder Journal.  Each morning I would display a photo from Wonderopolis, and ask kids to write their wonders about the photo into their journal.  We then spent some time exploring the Wonderopolis site to learn more about the topic and answer some of our wonders.  I absolutely loved this activity, and was really impressed by how good the kindergartners became at asking questions.

The Wonder I wanted to share with you today is What's the Best Thing to do on a Snow Day?  I thought this would be a fun way to greet your students when they return, and talk about snow days and why they happen.  There are also lots of other great wonders about snow, snowflakes and winter.

Julie Dannenberg had a great idea to have her students graph what they did during their snow day. You could do this on chart paper, or to "tech it up a notch", try one of these options:

• If you have a Mimio interactive projector (this will also work on a Hitachi), you are welcome to download this graph I made and use it with your students.
• If your students use their D2 apps, you can use a form to collect their data. I made a very simple one-if you'd like to use it, CLICK HERE to make a copy, and then distribute to your students to complete.  It will auto-magically (as Ann likes to say) create a spreadsheet for you! Wahoo!  You can make this into a graph by clicking the "insert chart" button in the toolbar.

If you have another idea, leave it in the comments!

QR Code Wonders

Love this idea for using QR codes to promote wonder and inquiry. Mrs. Caskey's library features QR codes stuck on foam snowflakes around her room. When students scan, they're taken to a site or video that answers the question on the snowflake, or encourages them to think and wonder about the question. These are changed throughout the year with different topics and themes.

QR codes can be made so easily. I like using qrstuff.com or the Google URL Shortener extension. This is such a simple and fun idea! Thanks, Mrs. Caskey!