FIAR-Katy and the Big Snow

Katy and the Big Snow was a fun unit.  Lily really enjoyed this one. It helped that we got some snow while we were rowing this book, too. :) We took advantage of actually having snow. We discussed snow plows, and how they help clear the roads. We cleared our own "snow." (shaving cream) This was Lily's favorite activity during this row: 

We measured the snow that we got, and compared it to the snow that Geopolis got in the book. We only 8-9 inches. Nowhere near the 5 feet that dumped on Geopolis! We did our own science experiments with the snow. Lily played around to see what would happen if she put snow into water. We also measured out 3 inches of snow. I asked Lily if she thought it would be 3 inches of water when it melted. She said no, she thought it would be less. She was right! 3 inches of snow was 1/2 inch of water.

We built our own Geopolis out of blocks. We also made street signs to include in the city.

We spent some time just playing in the snow. Our neighbor came over and the girls did some snow painting.

This book talked a lot about community helpers, so we discussed lots of different community helpers, and what they do for the community. I found some cute printables on Pinterest for that unit.

One of Lily's absolute favorite things to do was a street sign graph. I gave her a sheet that had street signs on the bottom. When we were in the car, she had to look out for those signs and graph them on her sheet. She had a blast with that.

We finished up the unit by measuring different things around the house.

This book had so many things to dig in to. We could have spent even more time on each thing, but we can always row this one again later. We are moving on to Owl Moon next. When I told Lily that we were finished up with Katy and the Big Snow, she said "Aww, but I'll miss Katy!" I love that she gets "attached" to the characters. She is really into the books, and is enjoying her journey with FIAR.

Five In a Row-The Snowy Day

We live in an area that rarely sees snow. We usually get lots of rain. This week, we got lots of snow, so I thought that we would row The Snowy Day. We had fun with this one, but we didn't spend an entire week on it. We just kind of used it as a detour.

The first thing we did was make a Borax crystal snowflake to get ready for the snow coming in. This was a great science project. Our snowflake is now hanging from our ceiling fan at Lily's request.

We went out in the snow for a bit. We had read in the book about making snow angels, so she had to try it!

We didn't get to make a snowman, because the snow was not good packing snow. After freezing in the snow for a while, we came inside and made "inside snow."  It is just toilet paper, Ivory soap and water. It made a moldable "snow" that we could make a snowman with. :)

We made an icicle art project-watered down white paint with sparkly glitter. Lily blew the paint with a straw to make her "icicles."

Of course, no snow unit would be complete without coffee filter snowflakes. :)

We have a science kit that had some "insta-snow" in it. Lily spent an ENTIRE day playing with this stuff!

 

 While we had lots of fun with our snow activities, we still needed to do our regular phonics activities:

We also worked on our Singapore math:

All in all, it was a short, fun little detour unit. And it got us ready for the next week when we got MORE snow!

Five In a Row-Madeline

     We decided on a curriculum change. Lily was getting bored with MFW. She didn't like that the worksheets were the same every week. She already knows her letters, so it was more of a review for her, so she just got bored. When Lily is bored, she WON'T do the work. She will sit for an hour working on something that she could finish in five minutes! We decided to move to a curriculum that is more hands on, and less worksheets. It's also different every week. :)  The curriculum we chose is Five In a Row. You read the same book every day for five days, and basically dissect the book. I wasn't sure how Lily would like reading the same book every day, but she really enjoys it.

     Our first "row" was Madeline. She loved it! We had so much fun with this book. One of my little daycare children joined us on the days he was here, and he really had fun with it, too. Lily enjoyed Madeline so much, that we got a couple of different Madeline books at the library.

     The first thing we did was talk about France. We learned that Madeline lives in France. So we found France on the map, and Lily had to identify where that was every day.

We enjoyed some French bread. When we were at the store, Lily said she doesn't like french bread, but I think her face says otherwise. :)

We worked on a GeoPuzzle. This one was of the World. We have one of just Europe, but I really wanted Lily to understand where France was compared to where the USA is. It took them a couple of days to get the puzzle done, but they did it!

Next, we learned about our bodies, and staying healthy. Madeline has her appendix out in the book, so this was a good time to talk about our health. We made wearable bodies. The lungs inflated, and they made a stomach. They even put a goldfish cracker down the esophagus and it landed in the stomach!

We talked about germs, and the importance of washing our hands. I asked Lily if she wiped her hand with a tissue, would that get all the germs off. She said yes. I put lotion and glitter on her hand, and had her rub it in. Then, I gave her a tissue to wipe it off. The glitter "germs" did not come off. I had her wash with soap and water. All clean!

We also looked at a book about the body, and identified body parts.

 For art, we discussed symmetry. We made a painting with a blob of paint on one side. Fold the paper, and the picture is the same on both sides.

We also made yellow Madeline hats out of paper bowls.

Math was fun. We discussed groupings. In the book there are "twelve little girls in two straight lines," so we used counters and talked about different groupings.

Lily also does Singapore math. She enjoys it. She does a few pages a week in the workbook in addition to the hands on math activities in FIAR.

  

We use McRuffy phonics and Hooked On Phonics as our main reading/phonics curriculum. There is more handwriting practice in the McRuffy workbooks.

What's a good unit study without some fun food projects?  We made the Eiffel Tower out of sugar wafer cookies and frosting.

And we finished up the unit with french toast for breakfast.

We also watched some episodes of the Madeline cartoon. It was such a fun week! I think we are really going to enjoy FIAR. I see many fun memories being made with these fun activities. :) Next week, we are rowing The Snowy Day and Owl Moon.