Let's Talk Leap Day!

Leap Day is coming up...February 29th, to be exact.  Y'know..in case you needed a reminder ;) 

So HOW do we celebrate and make this day relevant for our kiddos?!  Well here are just a few fun ideas!!!

This is a GREAT book to read on Leap Day!  Leap's Day: February 29th, by Stephanie Bee Simmons.

Here's a great Leap Day video geared toward kids, too!

And here's another!

Of course, no new concept is complete without an anchor chart.  Here's the one I did with my first graders four years ago!

That year we learned that Leap Year babies are called "leaplings" or "leapers".  We did a little text-to-self writing craftivity where the kids write about what it would be like if THEY were leapers/leaplings!  Hilarious answers, by the way!!!

Unfortunately I don't have a pattern for this craft because I created it on the fly, but if you look really carefully you'll see that it's pretty easy to recreate!

Next up we played some Leap Day games.  I LOVE a good game...especially one where the kids don't realize they're learning as they play : )  I divided the kids into teams….Team Leap & Team Day :)  One player from each team got to go head to head to find the word with the correct sound on the lily pads.  Our spelling patterns that week were /oa/ & /ow/.  When I introduced the /ow/ pattern, I explained that it can make two sounds. I wrote /ow/ words on the lily pads…each lily pad had a word either /ow/ sound.  When I called out a sound to the teams, the players had to LEAP to a word with the correct sound.  Such a FUN way to reinforce the different sounds & spelling pattern!!!  Some of them were SO excited to be first to land on a lily pad, but they were bummed to find out the word they chose didn’t have the right sound :)  They LOVED it!!! 

Of course, if these aren't your spelling patterns, you could really use this idea with anything/any concept/objective.  You could also focus on long e/short e vowel sounds (lEAp).  

We also played this little game with numbers, too!!  I wrote the numbers 1-28 on each lily pad and the kids had to practice skip counting by 4 by jumping from one lily pad to the next.  After that, I called each student up and had them pick out a number.  Then I asked them to either move to a number that was 4 more or 4 less than the number they chose.  Then they had to give me a number sentence that matched.  LOVED IT!!!!! 

Speaking of math, here's a little freebie for you to use on Monday!  For this activity, the kids will identify amounts and total values that are greater than/equal to/less than 29.  Why 29?  Leap Day, of course!  

If you love making thematic hats for celebratory days, I think this one is adorable.  It would be great to give this an academic spin and have your kids practice representing the number 29 in a variety of ways all the way around the band.  

via City Teacher Goes Country

Feel free to add your Leap Day ideas in the comments and link back to any blog posts you might have about celebrating in the classroom so we can all add some more ideas to our repertoires!