Leap Year Lessons
Looking for one more thing to plug in for Leap Day, how ‘bout an easy reader booklet that reviews the 6-basic shapes?
Your students will enjoy Who Leaped Away With The Shapes Today?
They read the repetitive sentence, trace and then write the shape word, as well as trace the shape around the critter that absconded with that shape.
Children who finish early can go back and color the characters.
When everyone has completed their booklet, read it as a whole-group activity to review concepts of print.
Print off your school photo, cut it in an oval and glue it to the last page. Run off copies for your students.
Before you give them the solution to the “mystery page”, graph their guesses as to what animal they think stole all of the shapes on Leap Day.
I’ve also included another graphing extension to see which Leapin’ animal is their favorite.
For more shape as well as color identification, run off my large animal shapes on a variety of colored construction paper.
To practice letter sounds, I’ve written an alliterative sentence on each shape.
Leave the character’s name as well as the shape out and have the students fill it in as you hold up the card and read the sentence.
Whenever I’m dealing with colors I have my students tell me the names in English as well as Spanish.
You can make an extra set and glue them to 8x10 pieces of tag board of a file folder.
Sprinkle the shapes on the floor and call on students to leap and hop to a specific one.
Choose the 4 most difficult ones for your students and hang one in each corner of the classroom. Play 4-Corners.
Choose an “It”. Cover its eyes and count backwards from 10-0. Everyone else has to leap and hop to a corner before you get to 0.
Anyone not in a corner and standing frozen is out and joins you and “It” in the middle of the carpet.“It” (eyes still covered) calls out a shape. Everyone in the corner with that shape is out.
Play continues ‘til only one child is left. My Y5’s absolutely LOVE this game and the constant repetition of the shapes, helps them with identification.
Play “Mystery Shape”. Glue the shapes to old file folders and trim so they are that shape.
Toss them in a large paper grocery bag. Students sit in a circle.
Pass the bag to the first child; without peeking they pick up a shape and keeping it in the bag they feel around it with one hand and try and guess which shape it is.
After 30 seconds they pull it out to see if they are correct and identify the shape that they are holding.
These shapes will also help your students get the wiggles out.
Add some music and movement to your Leap Day by gathering your little ones in a circle.
Pass out the shapes to 6 children and choose a 7th to play the teacher.
Sing The Kids And Their Shapes to the tune of Farmer In The Dell.
When their part in the song is sung, the child with that animal shape goes into the middle of the circle and jumps and leaps around.
The song ends with the child-teacher standing alone, because she took all the shapes, finally everyone falls down!
You might know from past articles that I’m crazy over recycling and plan at least one project a month involving recycled items.
I also love melting broken crayons in muffin tins or using candy molds. Leap Day was the perfect day to make a variety of colored frogs so that my students could make a cool Leap Day Shape Collage to go with the above booklet.
Make just enough for a center, or one for each child.
I also recycled old file folders to cut into the shape templates. Students arranged them on the “Who Leaped Away With The Shapes Today” paper (included with booklet) and then colored around the edges.
Click on the link to view/download Who Leaped Away Leap Day SHAPE booklet.
This ending is similar to my booklet There Was An Old Lady that reviews the months and would be a nice “go along” to read with this booklet. Children enjoy “feeding” her the monthly-words and their matching pictures.
Click on the link to view/download this extra Leap Day booklet.
Another companion booklet that my Y5’s really enjoy is Who Took The Cookies From The Classroom Cookie Jar? The cookie manipulatives have letters, numbers as well as shapes on them.
As with the above story, I’ve designed manipulatives to pass out to your students who fill the classroom cookie jar with them, when that part of the story is read.
Click on the link to view/download this fun booklet, great for Leap Day
Want more animal shapes?
Since Teaching With Angry Birds was such a huge hit, I just finished Angry Bird Shapes.
Save them for another day, or toss them into the Leap Day craziness.
Click on the link to view/download Angry Bird Shapes.
Whatever you and yours are leaping into on Leap Day I hope it’s simply grand!
As I stated in the first article, I thought it would be fun for your students if you got together with your fellow teachers and each offered a different activity on Leap Day.
Students would then Leap on over to another classroom for whatever time you deemed appropriate, to do that activity and continue leaping until they had visited each teacher and done however many activities your grade level had planned.
I made an entire packet of table top lessons to choose from, for some quickie morning activities that include a maze, pinch & poke, bingo dot, word find, what letter or number comes next, pattern pages, similarities and differences etc.
You can make these into “Ready-Set-Leap into action!” timed activities, or give them a specific amount of time to complete whatever packet you decide to make for them.
You can start off the day by leaving students a Leap Day note and pencil on their desk.
Students can keep all of their papers organized by tucking them into the Mama Kangaroo pouch that they made out of a paper plate.
Click on the link to view/download Leap Day Table Top Lessons.
Help eliminate the wiggles by acting out a few nursery rhymes that have leaping and jumping in them like Jack Be Nimble.
Click on the link to view/download Leapin’ Nursery Rhymes for Leap Day.
Sing the Leap Day Song, to the tune of Bingo, to help review the concept of subtraction, and reinforce a clapping pattern.
Since Leap Day was added on, to keep the seasons on course, you might also want to do a writing extension and make the class book Our Favorite Seasons, which also includes a graphing extension.
Click on the link to view/download Our Favorite Seasons class book, perfect for Leap Day.
Another season-related activity is the easy reader: Seasons Outside My Window, which includes an art activity + several skill sheets. Click on the link to view/download this Leap Day activity.
Read my version of There Was An Old Lady. It's a cute mystery with a fun ending that reviews the months, and includes the 30 Days Hath September Poem.
Students will enjoy “feeding” her the various months and pictures that match them.
Click on the link to view/download this hands-on story appropriate for Leap Day.
Movin' Through The Months is also a wonderful whole-group activity that culminates with a great class book that reinforces the months and also includes the 30 Days Hath September Poem.
This is a photograph of the bulletin board I made when we completed our book. As you can see we did lots of math extensions too.
Make your own, or print off mine to read to your students.
Click on the link to view/download this story that makes a nice review of the months for Leap Day.
End your Leap Day lessons by giving everyone a certificate of praise, which is also included in the Leap Day packet.
Whatever you decide to do to celebrate Leap Day, I hope you have a hoppin’ good time!
Scroll down for more articles on Leap Day and be sure and pop back tomorrow for my 6th and last Leap Day one.
Leapin’ Lizards Time Bomb is a fun way to help your students learn how to tell time, and is perfect for any day, but I designed it specifically for a special Leap Day activitiy.
Here’s how to play this Leap Day Game:
Run off the Leapin’ Lizards on white construction paper.
Students color their lizard with markers.
Using a protractor, poke a hole in the middle of the clock.
Cover with a reinforcement hole on the front and back.
This will help prevent tearing.
Insert a brad and a large and small paperclip that will be used as hands for the clock.
The teacher sets a timer.
Decide what digital time cards you want students to work on. I’ve made cards for the hour, half hour, quarter after and quarter to, plus a blank set for you to fill in any other times you want your students to practice.
Students put those clock cards face down.
The Time bomb cards are also mixed in.
Children play in groups of 2-4, taking turns pulling a card from the pile.
Each child has a time card. They circle the time that they pull on their time sheet, and rotate the paperclips on their leapin’ lizard clock to show the correct time.
If they get a time bomb card they lose their turn.
When the timer rings, students count up their circled times, the one who has leaped through time the most is the winner.
If you have enough hole punches, have students use them, as they help strengthen students’ hand muscles and make for a great fine motor skill.
Turn the Time Cards into real old-fashioned time cards by having students “punch” the times that they pull.
When the timer rings, children count up the number of holes that they have next to the times on their time cards.
Give everyone a certificate of praise.
Click on the link to view/download Leapin Lizard Time Bomb Leap Day Game
Follow this activity up with a writing extension and make a class book where students write about what time they “…leap out of bed and what their favorite time of day is and why.
There’s also a graphing extension that goes with the booklet.
There are 3 other class books to the Leap Day writing prompts, which includes my personal Super Hero favorite. This class book also includes a graphing extension which asks which super hero the students think can leap the highest and farthest.
Click on the link to view/download the Leap Day class books.
Be sure and leap on in tomorrow for yet another idea!
Scroll down for the other Leap Day activity articles and links.
One of the first things that come to my mind when I think of leaping is a frog, so I decided to design a few things for Leap Day with a frog theme. Hopefully this will give you some more ideas so that you can share them with your fellow teachers, so that you can each provide a lesson for your "Leap from room-to-room" Leap Day!
Run off duplicate sets of these frog cards and laminate them to make a variety of Leap Day activities.
Play Leapin’ Letters: Print the upper and lowercase letter cards on two different shades of green construction paper to make playing a Memory Match game easier.
Students pick a partner and flip over an uppercase letter and then try to match it to its lowercase partner.
Play continues ‘til all of the cards have been matched. The student with the most pairs wins the game.
Play “I Have…Who Has? Put card-pairs in a basket/bag/box. How ‘bout a kangaroo pouch?
Start with the person who has the letter A who says: “I have uppercase A who has lowercase a? “ Students lay the cards in sequential order on the carpet.
Finish off the game by pointing to the cards and singing the ABC song.
You can also mix in “Kaboom” bomb cards into the bag.
Children each choose a card from the pouch and keep it hidden.
Teacher also chooses a card. She shows her card and tells what she has and then calls on a student. They show their card and tell what they have.
If they have a bomb card, everyone yells “Kaboom!” and both the child who called on the bomb-card child, and the child with the bomb, are out of the game.
Play continues ‘til there is only one child left.
Scatter the cards all over the floor and have students leap around finding them.
When they are all picked up, have students hop over to the carpet area and sit in a circle. Arrange the cards in correct order by counting by 1’s, 2’s, 3’s, 5’s etc.
Decide which concepts you want to reinforce for Leap Day, run off those pages and have students make Itty Bitty booklets by tracing the numbers/letters, cutting out the individual cards and then putting them in appropriate order and stapling them into a mini-Leap Day booklet.
My Y5’s really enjoyed making, sharing and collecting these “just-my-size” booklets.
Click on the link to view/download Leap Day Frog Letter and Number Itty Bitty Card Booklets
To get the wiggles out show students how to play “Leap Frog.” Set a timer to ring in five minutes. Have students keep track of how many children they have jumped over.
Take this leaping activity a step farther and make large lily pads cut from green tag board.
Scatter them within leaping distance and write sets of skip-counting numbers on them. Have a set for counting by 2’s, 3’s, 5’s and 10’s.
Program a set for younger students to count by 1’s to whatever number you want them to count up to.
Have students leap from lily pad to lily pad skip counting as they go.
I adhere them to the floor with duct tape so children don’t slip.
To end the activity run off my “Hoppy Leap Day” lily pad and have them trace the numbers and make a 3-D lily out of a coffee filter.
Print off my "Hoppy Leap Day!" sticker labels to add that finishing touch.
For more number fun on Leap Day, I’ve also designed “Don’t get stuck!” Frog Facts.
A frog’s tongue is extremely sticky so they can zap insects for a tasty meal.
Children will enjoy writing fact families on the frog’s tongue.
Choose a specific number or two, have students write the equations on the frog’s tongue and then solve the problem.
Keep the tongues flat, or for a fun fine motor skill, have students roll the red or pink paper tongue strips into a coil using a pencil or crayon, they'll look like a party favor horn!
Click on the link for Frog Facts and Leap Day Lily Pad activity.
Another game that you can play as a reward for a job well done counting is “Hot Frog, Lizard, Rabbit or Kangaroo!”
This is played just like Hot Potato. Children sit in a circle and you play some jumpin jivin’ music.
They pass around a stuffed frog, lizard, rabbit or kangaroo.
When you stop the music every few seconds, the child holding the “Hot” thing is out of the game and has to Leap out of the circle.
Students who are out of the game, leap around to the music, ‘til there is only one child left who is the winner.
Scroll down for more Leap Day articles.
Pop back tomorrow for another Leap Day Activity, plus I'll have the entire Leap Day Unit done!
I was surfing the net for Lessons on Leap Day and they were really hard to find if not pretty non-existent!
So I felt it was really worth my time to make a unit for this day. I’ll be finishing it up this weekend and posting it.
What I thought would be fun would be for teachers to talk within their grade level, each choose a different activity to last a certain amount of time, and have students LEAP to a different class to do that activity.
To help get the wiggles out, they hop silently like bunnies, frogs, kangaroos etc. down the hall into the next kindergarten/first grade etc. classroom, to do another Leap Day activity.
I started doing research on animals that leaped, as I thought this would be really interesting for kids.
Wow! Did I learn a lot!
Most sources agreed that the highest leaper is the puma or mountain lion that can leap 5-6 times their height in a single bound, but when you compare the “contestants” in terms of their actual height that they can jump, relative to their body size, the tiny flea wins the gold medal!
For example, kangaroos are about 6 feet tall; they can jump 2 times their height, but fleas, can leap more than 130 times theirs!
This means if we would scale up a flea to our size, that would be like us jumping halfway up the Empire State Building in New York!
How’s that for a Leap Day leap?
I made a relatively easy reader, about interesting animals that leap and hop.
I tried to use words from the Dolch word list.
Students cut and glue the matching numbered pictures to the pages.
I also included a math extension where students tell which leaping animal was their favorite. Teachers can graph the results.
The Leaping Animal Booklet and graph are fun activities to plug into your Leap Day.
Click on the link to view/download My Leapin’ Animal Book Leap Day Activity Booklet.
I also wanted to find some YouTube videos for your little ones to watch to see all this leaping going on! Know that for everyone I find that's "Way Cool!" I view about 10 not so hot...
Here's the best of the best!
A University of Berkely study shot some high-speed video footage of leaping lizards, which supports a 40-year-old hypothesis about how theropod dinosaurs, like the velociraptors of Jurassic Park fame, adjusted the angle of their tails to stay stable when jumping. Click on the link to view this awesome clip. Leaping Lizards clip for Leap Day Activity.
I'd never seen real kangaroo's jumping with their babies in their pouch. Nice nature clip. Click on the link to view Leaping Roo's for Leap Day Activity.
No Leap Day would be complete without allowing students to play a little Leap Frog. Why not let them get the wiggles out jumping over each other and then catch this cute clip of real frogs competing in the very serious frog jumping contest in Calaveras County. Too funny, and boy are those frogs huge!
Click on the link to view Leaping Frogs in the Frog Jumping Contest of Calaveras County. Perfect for your Leap Day activities.
Finally, see a snake leap! I never heard of a leaping snake, but a video of a huge green one literally flying through the air as it leaps from one tree to the next in the jungle made a believer out of me. Also shows a winged lizard leaping! Click on the link to view a leaping snake and lizard for your Leap Day lessons!
Be sure and pop in tomorrow for a Leap To .29 Cents Coin Game.
