Winter is a fun time of the year to add some fun to your lesson plans. After Winter break, we all need a little excitement to get us motivated to learn again. Check out these 5 Winter lesson ideas that are great for elementary and special ed resource rooms.
Warm up with Hot Cocoa!
Your students will love making hot cocoa on a cold Winter day! Following a simple recipe is a great way to practice sequencing and retelling skills. When students have the opportunity to practice comprehension using real-life experiences it makes the experience more relatable. Plus, the skill of sequencing transfers to other learning activities over time. My Hot Cocoa Visual Recipe and Sequencing Activity includes visual recipe directions and an interactive sequencing booklet for students to create to help retell the activity.
Build an igloo!
If you’re making Hot Cocoa, then buy a few extra bags of marshmallows and some toothpicks, and have your students make igloos. This is a fun STEM activity to do when your students are feeling extra squirrely from being stuck inside. Let your students get creative and make their igloos however they want. If you happen to have any little Winter animals laying around, like plastic penguins or polar bears, students can put them in their igloos for fun.
Snow Day? Yes, please!
Your students will love this fun differentiated writing activity! Students complete the writing prompt “My favorite things to do on snow days are…” in one of the 2 different versions and color the snowball flap for their response. Interactive flap pages are a fun way to get creative with writing in a classroom of students with multiple disabilities and are great for students with limited fine motor skills. This Winter writing lesson is designed for elementary and special education classrooms and includes error-free picture choices. Best of all, this writing activity is NO PREP and super easy to leave for a sub.
Play “Where is the Winter Worm?”
Try this FUN Winter Positional Word Game with your special education classroom! “Where is the Winter Worm?” is a FUN, interactive game that will get your students up and moving while practicing positional words. This Winter themed game is a great addition to circle time, center time, or to use during a few free minutes of downtime! How do you play? Hide the Winter Worms around the classroom in the morning or while the students are at recess. Then have students search for them when they come in, and practice telling the class where the Winter Worms are using the visual positional word board.
Warm up those Fine Motor Skills!
Students can have fun strengthening their fine motor skills with these Winter Fine Motor Practice Packets. These Winter packets are LOW INK and READY TO PRINT! No need to laminate! You can put them at centers, send them home for extra practice, or give them to your early finishers. I use these practice packets in my special education classroom for my pre-writers and emerging writers. There are 5 Winter themed packets included in this resource. You can give students the whole packet, or print pages individually as needed. In each packet, students will color, trace, draw, cut, glue, and build with Play-Doh.
Happy Winter! Thanks for reading!
Looking for more Winter ideas? Click here for some fun lessons about Yetis!
