Activities for leap day

Leaping Through Letters And Numbers On Leap Day!

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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.

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Run off the animal templates on construction paper.

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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.

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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.

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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!

Leapin' Lizards What Time Is It? Time Bomb Leap Day Game

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:

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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.

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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.

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Click on the link to view/download Leapin Lizard Time Bomb Leap Day Game

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There’s also a graphing extension that goes with the booklet.

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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!

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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.

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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

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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.

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Print off my "Hoppy Leap Day!" sticker labels to add that finishing touch.

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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.

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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!”

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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!

 

My Leapin' Animal Book

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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! 

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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!

I hope you enjoy these Leap Day suggestions.  I know I found it interesting leaping around the internet discovering new "stuff" about critters that hop, jump and leap through out their day! 

Be sure and pop in tomorrow for a Leap To .29 Cents Coin Game.