Winter/Snow Theme Begins

Yay!  We are back in session with our second semester starting off well.  We are taking the month of January to focus on a winter/snow theme per Sawyer's request.  And because it is so NOT cold in Florida right now, it seemed a perfect idea.  Plus, we have plans to take the boys to the mountains next month with hopes of them getting to see snow for the first time.  Talk about a perfect field trip to end this unit! I'm excited just for myself because I haven't even seen snow in at least 7 years!

Reading:
We read several snow/snowman themed books this week, and will do the same for the next few weeks as well.  The first one we read was Snowmen All Year by Caralyn Buehner.  Then, Hayden built CVC words into snowmen, focusing on the short a sound, and Sawyer played around with the letter S for snow.  

The "an" Snowman Family

The next book we read was The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.  Then, we did a Winter Time ABC order which I found here.  Both boys were able to do this one since there was no handwriting involved, plenty of coloring, and great for scissor skills as well.

Hayden's ABC order

Finally, we read Snowmen At Night, also by Caralyn Buehner.  This was a fun one because we were able to do a cause-and-effect activity afterwards about melting snowmen.

Thinking about his snowman design

Assembling his snowman

Hayden's snowman

Sawyer's snowman

Writing:
For writing this week, Sawyer worked on the letter S, tracing gray lines that were actually mazes that got him from point A to point B focusing on holding his pencil right (VERY difficult for this guy), and he practiced his scissor skills.  He also helped Hayden with sentence building by taking turns unscrambling "snowy sentences".  Hayden started a new batch of spelling words, wrote a snowman story, and practiced his letter writing as well (Ss).

Cutting out a snowman shape

Sawyer helping to unscramble the snowy sentences.

The finished sentences.   

Hayden writing down the unscrambled sentences.  He had to capitalize the
first word of each sentence and remember to put a period at the end.

Writing his snowman story.  The transformer costume is just bonus.  The boys
had been playing around in them earlier, and I said he could keep wearing it
as long as he came and finished his schoolwork.  Hahaha!

Magnet letter spelling words

Typing his spelling words.

Math:
For math, I had Hayden doing his Right Start Math curriculum.  We hadn't done it since probably Thanksgiving because we had been doing so many holiday themed activities.  So, I'm ready for him to get back on track with that.  He should be taking a test in a week or so to see what all he has retained since the beginning of the year.

Working with base 10 block cards and place value cards to add numbers in
the 1000s.

Sawyer got to do more of the winter/snow themed math stuff.

Marshmallow math.  I would put two numbers in the first two boxes.  He had
to count out that many marshmallows in each of the boxes.  Then, he added
those marshmallows together to figure out the answer.  

Snowmen Patterns.  There were three patterns to finish out with four or five
snowmen to choose from.  

Making a shape snowman

The finished product

 Science:
I found a pretty cool science project using water beads (or water gems?).  These things are usually used in flower vases or for candleholders or just decorative purposes.  They start off as small hard plastic balls.  You soak them in water, and like those cool little animals you get as kids, they grow as they soak the water up, keeping your flowers hydrated without having to water them constantly, and it looks pretty.  Well, I found out that they sell these things in cube shapes as well, and we did this science experiment with them.

We decided to split up the cubes.  One batch we did in plain water, and one
batch we colored the water blue with food coloring.

The cubes after we put them in the water for a few minutes.

After a couple of hours

After another couple of hours.

And the cubes dyed blue from the food coloring after about 5 hours.

Then we froze some of the cubes as well to see what would happen.

We left them on the counter for several days.  By the end of the week, most
of them had shrunk back down to this size.  They felt like jello.  The ones
in the freezer squished apart pretty easily, but the non-frozen ones held their
shape pretty well.

Other:
We had a few other fun activities and snacks to go along with our theme.  I found several little songs and poems from Mrs. Home Economist.  We'll be using more of her stuff next week as well.  This week we did "5 Little Snowmen", "I Built a Little Snowman", and "I'm a Little Snowman" (sung to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot").

I also did an art activity with Sawyer that I did with Hayden several years ago for Christmas presents.  We made snowman family fingerprints on Christmas ornaments.  I still need to paint faces on his prints, and once I do, I'll post those pics.

Snacks this week consisted of mini marshmallow snowman treats and snowman popcorn cups.  Both were a huge hit.  I'll probably do the popcorn cups again next week since they were easy (and better for them than a bunch of marshmallows)!