Saturday, February 25, 2012

The Snowy Day {BFIAR}

After several months of flying by the seat of our pants, we finally have had a week of well planned and implemented school time!
It feels SO good to be back on track!
And to top off the excitement, we started something new:
This is our trial run to help me decide if I truly want to use Five in a Row for Kindergarten in September with Piper.
It caught my attention because 1) it is affordable and 2) it is literature based and 3) it comes highly recommended.
And as far as I can tell at this point, I think we are going to love it!



This week we began with The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.
I figured we should get this book in before the snow disappears!


Of course, you can't read The Snowy Day without playing with some snow!
With a new baby in tow, it can be difficult to get outside and play (Daddy and grandparents provide those adventures lately) so we brought the snow in!
We added some extra delight by coloring the snow!


Taitum has been working on learning her colors lately.
To reinforce this with something related to the book, we made a traffic light and then the girls had to sort and add various craft materials to the lights according to color!
We also later played the infamous "Red Light, Green Light" game since we also discussed what the different color lights mean in traffic.




In the story, Peter makes tracks in the snow with his feet and then with a stick.
We pulled out the playdoh to make our own tracks using different polar animal toys.
This was short lived though - the playdoh I made wasn't the greatest...
(Any GOOD play doh recipes out there?)




The girls used puffy paint (50/50 mixture of shaving cream and glue) to recreate a snowy picture from the book.


They later added Peter to their paintings using crayons.
I think he's super cute!


We also did a science experiment involving melting ice but I'll share that with you in another post!

The girls stayed busy with different workbox activities, too.
These did not all necessarily relate to The Snowy Day but included a polar animal theme and left over Valentine activities.

Magnetic Pom Poms with Polar Lands Magnet Pages


Fishing for alphabet snowflakes



Cutting practice with The Snowy Day cutting practice sheets

I also assembled Snowy Day lapbooks for each of the girls.
Every day we worked on a different activity from each lapbook.

Taitum's lapbook:
Winter Clothing Colors
Mitten Match
Winter/Summer Clothes Sort
Snowflake Counting

Piper's lapbook:




We didn't get to do all the acivities this week (we're continuing with The Snowy Day next week, too) but the girls were so excited about the ones we did do!


Piper impressed me with her ability to remember the sequence of the story!


And Tait was all over the mitten matching!


And the clip counting cards were way to easy for Pipe!
I think I'll have Tait tackle this one next week!


We are continuing to work through our All About Reading program and the girls are still LOVING it!
We've completed the upper and lowercase letter sections and have moved on to phonetic sounds.
For each letter they have to cut and paste the pictures that begin with the phonetic sound.
Piper and Tait are thrilled to get to use scissors everyday!



 I also found these winter snowman printables.
For each letter, Piper has to dot the pictures that begin with that sound.


It has felt so good to finally have a productive week of school!
It's a bit challenging trying to work around a newborn's schedule but by being very flexible, we've been able to make it work!
Next week we'll continue on with activities related to The Snowy Day but also take some time to learn about polar animals!

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