Our In-School Snow Day

If your area is anything like ours then you've had a few encounters with snow already. I'm going to be completely honest, I am over the snow and winter already. Now, I realize we still have a good amount of winter left. I'm not crazy. I understand that. However, I would be completely happy with the cold weather if we could hold off on any more snow. We all know what happens when it snows....
- playgrounds get covered up
- we have inside recess for days (maybe even weeks)
- we may get a snow day
-we may not get a snow day....when we totally should have

The last scenario was our reality last week. The weather wasn't great but we still had school. I'll admit that it could have been much worse but the conditions weren't the best for continuing to require school to be in session. So what do you do when you should be having a snow day but are stuck in school? Well, you have an in-school snow day of course!

Since we couldn't be out in the snow all day we brought it in and made the whole day focused around snow! We started the day doing a little persuasive writing during our journal time.

Then we did a little expository writing. To connect with our previous unit on sequence we wrote the directions to making a snowman. Students were challenged with giving detailed directions to correctly sequence the building of a snowman. We then tried to follow these directions to see if they would result in a snowman.

We learned that when giving directions we need to be very specific. So we tried again as a class and found success!

During reading we worked through a ton of books that were snow related.

Then we had science. Student groups were tasked with forming a plan to melt a cup of snow. Their goal was to find the fastest method. Groups each came up with a different plan of attack.

After plans were made groups were given their cup of snow and began. It got intense extremely quickly!

Afterwards groups went around and observed how other tables' methods how worked. We then discussed what worked best and why.

When it came to math, we kept with the snow theme and had a snow ball fight! Now, don't worry. This was an indoor fight and no I didn't bring snow in for this. I don't think that would go over well with a lot of people. So I took an idea from a wonderful colleague Ashley Smith and we used paper to write our math facts. We then tossed our snow balls around. Students then found a snow ball, solved the equation and wrote their answer down. They then crumbled their snowball and threw it again. We will definitely be having more inside snowball fights!

So while I'm not a huge fan of school days when I consider the weather to warrant a snow day....I can say that we will be prepared if another one rolls around!

:)