A Wonderful Start to Winter

January seems to have come and gone in a flash!  Here is just a sampling of the fun and learning from the past month.

We started the new year by learning all about winter--winter weather, winter clothes, winter animals--and of course we learned about SNOW!

                                                 

We used Pebble-Go to do a little research about snow and snowflakes.  We found out that no two snowflakes are exactly the same, but if you look under a microscope, you will find a hexagon in the center of all snowflakes. 

So, we grabbed a few hexagons, along with some of our other favorite shapes, and built some snowflakes of our own to accompany our research.  

Along with our winter research, we spent a lot of time exploring the much less serious works about SNOWMEN!

First we read All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle.  You can listen to the story here.  After reading about everything you need for a snowman, we had to try our hand at building our own snowmen!  Since we didn't have any snow of our own--yet--we grabbed a partner and used some snowdough to build our snowmen. 

After we got some practical experience with snowman building, we took some time to enjoy the works of Caralyn Beuhner.  We read about snowmen at night, snowmen at work, and snowmen all year!  We loved taking time to retell these stories and using our imaginations to talk about what we would do with snowmen like the ones in Ms. Beuhner's books.  If you and your kiddo want to relive the fun, you can listen here.

We couldn't let our study of Winter end without some yummy winter treats.  We taste tested some yummy warm (hot chocolate) and cold (vanilla ice cream) winter treats.  Lots of kiddos loved our hot chocolate, but most of us liked the ice cream the best!  

Finally, we built an ooey, gooey, edible snowman!

Then we practiced using describing words to talk about our snowmen. 

Once we had a good grasp on winter weather and snow, we began learning some more about one of my favorite cold weather animals--PENGUINS!

We used books, videos, and web sites to learn more about these cute and clever creatures.   We started with Gail Gibbons book Penguins.  Gail Gibbons is always our go to author for teaching books!

We used Gail Gibbons book as mentor text to help us create teaching books of our own.

To help us better understand the life of the penguin, we tried waddling with our eggs on our feet like the emperor penguin, and experienced some nice, icey penguin water with and without the blubber.

It was great to learn about real penguins, but I think our favorite penguin was of the fictional variety!

We spent a whole week exploring Helen Lester's odd and lovable character, Tacky.

We looked at all the ways the stories were the same and different and talking about the heart of all Helen Lester's work.

And because good writing inspires good writing, we made our own Tacky and created our own stories--I think our Tacky attire helped with the creative process. 😉

If you and your family are looking for some great stories for the whole family to enjoy--please check out a Tacky book.  I promise you will LOVE them!!