Leaping Through Letters And Numbers On Leap Day!

Although I made these sliders specifically for Leap Day (These are animals that are fairly good at leaping/hopping) they also fit in nicely with your other monthly themes.

I’ve designed a slider for all of my units and had my Y5’s make one every month to review a variety of report card standards.

They enjoyed making and collecting them.  Sliders were especially helpful for my ESL students and strugglers.

The Leapin' Animals have strips for skip counting by 2's, 3's, 5's, and 10's.  Students can also make an upper and lowercase "Letter Leaper" and younger students can count by 1's.

Here’s How To Make A Leap Day Slider:

Run off the animal templates on construction paper.

Decide which letter or number strip you want to review and make copies.

Cut them on a paper cutter. Pre-cut slits with an Exacto knife.

Give children a choice of which animal they want to make.

Students cut out their Leap Day critter and add some colorful details with crayons or markers.

Give students glue dots and wiggle eyes to add a bit of pizzazz.

Children trace the letters and numbers with a highlighter, marker or crayon.

Add a math extension to the process by having them choose 2 or 3 colors and trace in an ABAB or ABC pattern.

Demonstrate how to insert their strip into the slits.

I've made a template for some "Hoppy" Leap Day! sticker labels, if you want students to be able to add one to their creations.

When everyone is done assemble them on the carpet area and skip count together, start leaping from one number or letter to the next, sing the ABC song, spell words, names, etc.

To help get the wiggles out, children can take out their strip and you can do the Leap Day Animal Pokey with them.  I've included the song in the packet.

Students can also use their Leap Day Pal for a spatial direction review.

The teacher tells students to put the kangaroo beside, under, above, behind etc.

Teachers can also review body parts with students by having children place their squirrel on their knee, hip, thigh, wrist etc.

Click on the link to view/download Leapin' Animal Sliders for Leap Day

I hope you have a “Hoppy” Day learning and leaping as you go!

Scroll down for more Leap Day Articles

Be sure and pop in tomorrow for some more fun teaching tips!

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!