The Snowy Day

Happy 2016! The first week of school happened to be our first chilly week here in Florida! Luckily, I have been saving The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats for such an occasion. Another new thing we realized is that our Ezra is starting to want to participate in some of our school activities. This is one of the reasons why I chose to start with BFIAR since its for ages 2-4. That and also even though Silas was 4.5 when we started there were many titles we had not yet read and since literature is one of Mommy's loves, we want to read as much as we can!

On Monday, we began reading our story. I made a little Peter doll so Silas and Ezra took turns acting out what Peter did while I read. We talked about how funny it was that the author's name was Ezra. We talked about what an author does and also read about our author in the back of the book since he won an Alcott award for this book for being one of the firsts to depict an urban setting when people didn't usually do that back when he wrote the book. That probably went over the boys' heads though haha. 

We turned to the part of the book where Peter makes tracks in the snow and we talked about how different animal tracks are! We used our Montessori animal cards and identified some new animals like- Coyotes and Mountain Lions. We saw all their different tracks and made some tracks in play dough. Silas thought of a great way to make a mountain lion print. Ezra also played with play dough and loved the raccoon picture that he called "rack hoon". 

After this, we used our Lauri Number Puzzles to do some mathematics. We separated the peg hole portions of the puzzle and laid them on the ground not in order. Silas had to tell me what number was on the board before he could hop to the next one. I was surprised at how he identified the 5 holes in the traditional domino pattern without counting. He said that he sees 5 like that a lot on iPad games. Ezra followed behind trying to hop board to board. 

Our art project was cutting out snowflakes and gluing glitter to them. All of our snowflakes had six points, yet all were different. We talked about how that was cool of God to make them that way and people are kind of like that too. Ezra tried using glitter for the first time and thought it was great and Ruby enjoyed being in the school room with us too.

Tuesday, we started by checking on our snowflakes and hanging them in the school room. 

We were a little reluctant to read the story. Silas felt that it was kind of "boring". I told him that we don't have to like everything we read but we can read to learn. We discussed the part where Peter knew he was too small to play with the big boys so he had his own fun and that was all his own idea. It's okay to not do everything others do and have your own ideas. The page where the snowball melted in Peter's pocket once he went inside brought us to our science lesson. Silas told me he already knew why the snowball melted. Smarty pants. We decided to see how fast ice melts at different temperatures, just leaving it alone, and what salt does to ice. It melted in less than a minute in hot water, slower in regular water, and even slower in cold water. Silas thought it was so funny watching how little the ice got so fast! We left it in a frozen cup and it stayed the same size for a while. The salt didn't melt fast and Silas said it felt so much colder. 

For math, we used snowballs that we received as a Christmas gift from a friend to do snowball math. We practiced adding and subtracting and, of course, ended with a snowball fight. For handwriting, we worked on W's for winter and we ended our day making a snowman. I taught Silas how to unroll the cotton ball and he thought that was great.

Wednesday began, and Silas was still reluctant to listen to our story. we decided to listen to a read aloud version and enjoyed it because they had background noises that went with the words. I always loved listening to books on cassette tapes when I was little and it reminded of that. We also saw a really neat claymation video that totally changed the school plans because we then really wanted to play with play dough and make our own Peter and a snowy day for him to play in. We also did some dry/erase workbooks and used our iPad for some thinking games. Silas even boasted at being able to move up to a difficult level on one of the apps!

Thursday, we were more excited to read Peter because we enjoyed the read a long so much. We found a really good song to go with the story so we used that today and loved it. We listened to it at least 10 times and it inspired ukulele work in the afternoon. We created a snowy day scene with paint and made Peter tracks with a q-tip. Silas chose to paint the sky purple since it often looked purple in the book. Ezra also painted and glued a Peter to his paper. He called it Peter Gingerbread! It was so cute watching his imitate brother. 

When Ezra went to nap, we focused on using our Lauri kids puzzle as stencil and stenciled Peter playing all over the snow. 

We wrote Peter's name on top and Silas signed his name on the bottom. Afterwards we took the kids from our puzzle and practiced counting forwards and backwards from 18. We also worked on counting by 2's for a little while too. We practiced W's in the afternoon and after dad got home we tuned the ukulele and learned the C chord.

All in all, we had a lot of fun with Peter and The Snowy Day. I like that by the end of the week Silas really liked a book that he wasn't crazy about before. Our activities were really fun and I think he will remember them whenever he sees the book.

P.S. How cute is it to see Ezra's artwork up there too? His first project!