- Adam is 38 months old -
This week for Tot School we focused on the book “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats and used Before Five in a Row, Homeschool Share, and a few wonderful websites to have lots of snowy fun!
This is one of my favorite books that we’ve read from the Before Five in a Row manual. The illustrations are colorful and the story is all about a little boy’s adventures in the snow. I had planned this unit several weeks ago when we had a lot of snow, but it quickly warmed up and melted away. I’ve been waiting and waiting for snow and when we woke up to 2 inches on Tuesday, I pulled out everything and we got started!
We also read a few books from the library:
“Snowy, Blowy Winter” by Bob Rackza
“Millions of Snowflakes” by Mary McKenna Siddals
“The Mitten” by Jim Aylesworth
And sang, “Once There Was a Snowman” which is a favorite children’s primary song in our church.
I meant to remind him of the ASL sign for ‘snow’ but completely forgot!
I downloaded the following activities from Homeschool Share.
“S is for Snow” Letter Search
Adam marked all the letter s’s.
He glued pieces of paper to make a snowman and if you look closely, you can see little twig arms and buttons.
After reading “The Snowy Day” 5 or 6 times, we practiced remembering the story by putting these cards into order. He didn’t understand what I was asking him to do at first, but once we got started he could choose between two cards and remember which one came next and which one was later in the story.
I used Carisa’s Winter Fun Tot Pack for the following:
Snowflake Halves
The colored version was a cinch, but he had to really focus and look carefully to match the black and white snowflakes halves together.
Snowman ABC’s
He matched alphabet magnets to the letter on the snowman
Snowflake Matching
These next activities I got from a website called Musings of Me written by a mom named Michelle. She put together a huge winter themed preschool pack and posted it all for free! Having other people do all the leg work sure makes my job a little faster and easier. Thanks Michelle!
“W is for Winter”
Adam used pom-pom magnets on top of a cookie sheet to fill in all the dots. (I made these by simply gluing pom-poms onto round craft magnets)
Snowman Counting
Adam counted the stars on the snowman’s belly and then placed the corresponding numbered hat onto his head.
He counted and matched correctly up to number 7 and then needed my help keeping track of the stars while he counted the 8-10 cards. I was pleasantly surprised that he identified all 10 numbers correctly on the hats (only needing help distinguishing 6 from 9). When I “tested” him a few weeks ago, he only knew 1-5 and 7.
Using a snowman hat to sing, “Once There Was a Snowman”…his idea!
Snowflake Sizes
Adam sorted snowflakes into large, medium, and small piles
While sorting he said, “Large Diet Coke!” as he put a large snowflake into the pile. I guess I run through McDonald’s for their $1 drinks too often while running errands! After that, he just wanted to pretend that the snowflakes were food and put them into lunch boxes.
Using our snowflakes to sing a song I made up based on a children’s Primary song called “It’s Autumn Time”. The song is about snow falling so we lightly drifted threw the snowflakes around.
“The Colors of Winter”
He lost interest after only 3 pictures. Coloring is not his idea of fun most of the time.
Instead we hopped around holding one of the pictures. Don’t ask me why.
“Winter Things Counting”
We did two fun art projects this week that I saw on Confessions of a Homeschooler under her Arts & Crafts/Christmas drop-down link.
Cotton Ball Snowman
Popsicle Stick Snowflakes
Messy!
On the one day when the snow was still on the ground, Adam got to stay up past his naptime and play in the snow! We made tracks, snow angels, and hit the snow off a tree just like Peter did in the story. He LOVED being outside!
There was a recipe in the back of “Snowy, Blowy Winter” for Snow Ice Cream. Adam loved it but my husband and I thought it tasted like snow….not very appealing. It was fun though!
We had a great week and my Mom even got in on a little Tot School one day. Here she is reading “The Snowy Day” to Adam. Oh how he loves his Nana!
Whew…what a long post! I do these posts as a way to remember what Adam was like in this moment in time so pardon the length and picture overload!
Go to 1+1+1=1 for more Tot School ideas.
