February Fun Linky

I really like teaching during the month of February because there are a lot of fun seasonal activities you can incorporate into the curriculum. On February 1, we have an in-school field trip to learn about Native American life. I'll tell more about that later when I have some pictures to share. Of course there's Valentine's Day and Groundhog Day and the Superbowl that add some excitement to your lessons. If you have something fun you like to do with your class in February, link up at the bottom of this post!

Here are a few things I like to do...

This is a fun math activity to introduce the idea of area and perimeter. We don't really teach area in second grade, but I like them to understand what it is because it will be a skill in third grade. This activity using candy hearts (or any other small candy) is a good introduction using non-standard units.

 

Here's another math activity using candy hearts. Students arrange them in an array. This is where I introduce the idea of multiplication. I have them write down how many hearts are in each row. Then, they do repeated addition to find the total. I have them hide their answers and let them take turns telling me how many rows and how many columns they have. They are always amazed that I can immediately tell them how many hearts they have. It's gets them excited to learn multiplication.

I also do Valentine heart graphing, addition, and estimation activities, Valentine's Day letter writing, abc order, and a fun word search. All of those activities can be found in my Valentine's Day Mini Pack: