The Snowy Day ~ Before FIAR

I really like Ezra Jack Keats stories, they are so simple and sweet.  

I was really hoping for snow this month, but we have yet to receive a significant amount.  Needless to say, we made do with what we were given, and had a fun week full of snowy activities.

Letter of the week:  S

Bible verse:  A wise son maketh a glad father.  Proverbs 15:20a

           

While the boys traced, colored, and cut out the S Bible verse coloring page, they worked on memorizing their Bible verse.  I use Proverbs for Preschoolers:  Through the Proverbs from A to Z workbook.  This book is part of our Character Concepts Curriculum.

Working hard on their S coloring page.

                                                      The boys love cutting up everything?!

Snow

Okay, we did get snow.  But it did not stick and accumulate into anything wonderful.

       This is all the snow we have received so far this winter.  I'm hoping for a big February snowstorm!

A Special Treat!

Traffic Light Graham Crackers.

I saw this treat made somewhere, not sure where?

  I decided this would be a fun treat to make, since there is a picture of a traffic light on the cover of the book and in the story.

                                                   Pardon our orange M&M, we ran out of red.

To make, you will need...

~graham crackers - We used graham cracker snack sticks.

                                      ~Peanut Butter

                                      ~ M&M's candy

The boys had a fun time making these, as well as eating them!

                                         

For this project, I bought a bag of M&M's, and of course we needed red, green, and yellow.

Would you believe there were only 3 red M&M's in the whole bag?  

Science

Making Crystal Snowflakes.

You can find instructions here.

Big D's Crystal Snowflake. 

  I thought this was a really neat experiment!  Big D really liked dumping all the Borax into the jar, and watching the snowflake form throughout the day.

More books we read to go along with The Snowy Day

• In the story Whistle for Willie there is a picture of a Traffic light, just like in The Snowy Day . The boys noticed this comparison.
• For the story The Mitten we played a mitten matching game, which you can find here.

Crafts

Potato Masher Snowmen

We borrowed my mom's old potato masher, and stamped out some snowmen to dress.

 Big D's snowman

 Lil D's snowman.  

Math

counting snowballs(cotton balls) with tweezers.

I set up 10 bowls labeled 1 - 10.  Big D had to use a tweezer to fill the bowls

with the correct amount of snowballs.

 Lil D trying his hand at the tweezers.

Thanks for visiting!  

We are currently rowing the book The Glorious Flight, come back to see our fun projects for this book.

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The Mitten

We have been reading The Snowy Day as part of our Before FIAR curriculum, so I thought this might be a fun go-along book to read.   I have never read this book before, and I have seen a lot of mom's on the blogosphere reading it to their children.  Well the boys loved this story and so did I!

Mitten Matching Game

I came up with a fun game for my tot Lil D to play, and Big D enjoyed it too!  We played a mitten matching game with a pile of mittens from the coat closet.(After searching for matching mittens, I realized I need to clean out the closet!) After the mittens were matched they used clothespins to hang the mittens.

Here are some pictures of their fun time...

                               I put a pile of mittens on the floor and the boys had to match them together.

I strung up some string and let the boys try their hand at using a clothespin.

Big D was so funny as he tried to open the pin, just look at his mouth.

Using the clothespins was a little harder for Lil D.

Links for other activities to go along with this book...

• The world of Jan Brett ~ coloring pages, activities, games...
• 1+1+1=1 ~ Free story prop printables

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Come back soon to check out our row of The Snowy Day.

Thanks for visiting!  I'd love to hear from you! 

Katy & the Big Snow - FIAR

The boys and I love this story!(Big D loves anything construction related) 

 The story is about a tractor named Katy and in the summer she is a bulldozer, and in the winter she is a big, strong snowplow.  A big snowstorm hits the city of Geopolis.   Katy works very hard to clear all the roads in the city.  

I tied this book in with our Character Development lessons on Patience; Waiting with a happy heart and Responsibility; Doing the best at every job because Jesus is watching.

Patience:  Katy is so strong and big she had to wait for the bigger snow storms to come before she could head out to use her snowplow.

Responsibility: A big storm blanketed the city with snow so Katy had to work hard to plow all the roads.  She started getting tired, but Katy never quit until she finished the job.  

Counting 

In the beginning of the story on page 1, the author gives details about Katy in the margins; how many speeds she has, how much horsepower, her different types of attachments for her tractor, etc.

Big D and I were talking about Katy's horsepower.  She has 55 horsepower.  So we decided to count by 5's with legos....

 Big D made 11 towers with 5 legos for each tower.  Then we counted by 5's...

Then he decided to connect all the legos together to form one big tower....

Sensory Bin

I put together a bin with cotton balls, street signs, trees, a police station, and so on to make a city of Geoppolis sensory bin.

The boys had a great time playing in it.

Even Lil D practiced using his tongs.

Building our own City of Geoppolis

This was a lot of fun!

The boys worked very hard on this project and were so proud to show dad later that day.

The city had a train station.

Here is Katy at the grocery store.

Here is an arial view of the city.  The biggest building in the city was the Home Depot!

Our Home Depot even had a garden center out back.  

                        (Big D's favorite store is The Home Depot. It is a DIY type store or building supply store.)  

                                   The Highway Maintenance building where Katy lives.

While building our city I asked Big D what kind of business or buildings would we need in our city?  The Home Depot was the first business that was built!
 This task helped him understand that we need all different types of buildings and business to keep the city running smoothly.

Field Trip!

I called our town's Public Works Department and set up a date to come in and see their snowplow trucks.

Big D and Lil D could not wait for this trip!  

The day arrived and the boys were giddy with excitement!  We grabbed our brownies we made "for the snowplow men" and headed down the road.

Big D is all about construction and tools!   The first truck the two gentlemen showed us was the backhoe digger!  Oooh Big D was in heaven!

             

Next we headed into their garage where all the other trucks were kept.  Here they are in front of one of the smaller salt trucks.  It was all loaded up and ready to go for the ice storm we had a couple days later.

Big D was hoisted up into the large salt truck to check it out.

The big salt/snowplow truck.  

We learned they don't keep the snowplows/shovels hooked on the front of the trucks.  They told us they are heavy and break often.   So the shovels only go on when they are needed.

Measuring

In the story it snowed 5 feet! 

  We measured out 5 feet of string and held it up to see how high the snow would be.

It's hard to see in this picture, but he is holding a string to see how high the snow would be.

Working on glueing his street signs into his mini book...

                                              Big D's partially finished lap book.

                              Other books we read...

Resources

• homeschoolshare.com

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I'd love to hear from you!  Leave me a comment.Thanks!~Christine