Winter Activities in Upper Elementary

January can tend to be a “blah” time in the classroom. The excitement of the holidays is over and you have to come back from break. Today, I wanted to share with you some of the things I do in January to keep my kiddos engaged, learning, and having fun!

Winter Digital Slides

For reading centers, I love using these Winter Digital Slides to make it easy for me and engaging for my students.

In the winter digital slides students will read close reads, do word work assignments, work on vocabulary and write an essay!

Plus, they will watch videos and listen to other people read stories! I love a good theme too, so when we have a themed week these fit perfectly!

>>>Check them out here<<<

Snow Activities

Don’t you just love SNOW?! Well I do and let me tell you so do kids!

We  like to do a few things with the theme of “snow”.

We love to read these three books (affiliate link if you click on the book)! & work on reading analyzation skills afterwards.

I LOVE doing the trapped in a snow-globe writing found here by Teach Create Motivate for Free! The kids find this SO MUCH FUN!

Snowball math is one of my favorite things ever and it is ZERO prep!

I have the kids grab a scrap piece of paper and then I put a math problem on the board. They have to solve it and write the answer on the paper. Then, we go over it. When done, once they have fixed their answer so it is correct they crumple it up and have a snowball fight. When the timer goes off they have to grab the nearest paper to them and we do the same thing again. SO easy and SO much fun!

Arctic Animals

There are so many great arctic animals to learn about and my kids LOVE them!

Here are some simple things we do:

• Polar bear and penguin research writing! Freebie here!
• Hibernation STEM: the students learn about hibernation and then they have to create a home for a bear to hibernate in using the materials I provide.
• Arctic Animal Research: The kids pick an arctic animal, research it, and write an essay on it. Then, they print pictures and create a poster to share with the class.
• Reading the books below (affiliate link by clicking on the book)

Paragraph of the Day

We read a paragraph each day in the month of January to start preparing for state tests, read interesting information and keep kids working on reading skills everyday.

>>>Check it out here<<<

Winter Reading and STEM Challenge

I love a good reading challenge, but there is nothing better than a reading challenge and a STEM challenge mixed together!

During this challenge students will complete high level reading passages and work on many reading skills. Each time they pass a challenge they earn a material for their STEM project. The STEM project is to create a snow-fort for their snow person.

By the end students will have read 10 different passages and analyzed the text completely.

Then, they can complete a STEM project! Easy integration! 🙂

>>>>Find it here<<<<

I hope some of these ideas can give you a fun and engaging winter in your upper elementary classroom.