Katy and The Big Snow Activities

Are you rowing this home school year?!  If you are not familiar with the term, "rowing" it comes from the Five In A Row Curriculum.  It's a literature based  curriculum that uses a book to explore social studies, language arts, math, science, and art topics.   We are loving it!

This week we rowed, Katy and the Big Snow. 

Katy and The Big Snow is about a hard working red tractor who "becomes a heroine as she finally gets a chance to work and fulfill her responsibilities" (summary from FIAR manual).

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My son really enjoyed this book and I enjoyed getting to cuddle up and read it to him.  With the exception of reading before nap time, he is not much of a cuddler (is that a word?!) during our Five in a Row readings; I think because he liked the book he was more apt to cuddle with me.  More often than not, he sits on one of his ride on cars.  I love snuggle time with him, though!  My little boy is growing up....

We "rowed" another book by Virginia Lee Burton earlier in this school year; we read "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel."  Both books are full of charm; it's a no wonder both are considered classics. 

Katy and the Big Snow Five in a Row Activities

Social Studies:  Compass, Cardinal Directions, Road Signs

Using Beginning Geography, T learned the points of the compass.  We have talked about cardinal directions before, so it was a bit of a review, too. 

To practice more with cardinal directions, we played "If You Were Katy."  I placed several community location pictures, as well as signs to indicate N, S, E, W, around our living room.  T rolled the die to find out where he was to go to. 

The highlight of our week, was our DIY snowplow!  I attatched a hamper to his ride-on toy and made "snowballs" with rolled up socks!!  This was a fabulous way to add in some pretend-play!  And put those newly learned compass skills into action!

Completed a Road Signs lapbook page from Homeschool Share.

Language Arts:  Copy Work, Explode the Code, Personification

We are one page away from finishing up Explode the Code book 1 and I am just so proud of him!  ETC combined with All About Spelling, really helped him gain confidence in blending his sounds together to read!  I picked up a Little Critters "Play Ball" early readers book and he read most of it without my help!  Finding beginning readers is tough!  They are either too easy and/or a little bit too wordy and over-whelm him.

We revisited Personification; I gathered a bunch of toys and had T sort them into two piles: objects that showed some type of human characteristic and not-personified.  Afterwords he placed eye stickers on a bunch of his toys and we made up stories together!  He is such an animated story-teller, usually using actions rather than words to describe/ show something! 

Math:  Counting by 5's, Measurement

Counted by 5's with this snowman printable

I introduced measuring in inches and feet; my son really enjoys measuring things, so I pulled out a long piece of butcher paper from his art easel and we measured how much snow fell in the city of Geopolis.  We measured 4 inches, 10 inches, 2 feet, 3 feet, and 5 feet.  Then I made some snow paint and we covered the piece of paper!

Afterwords, T had fun rolling his cars in the snow but unfortunately they all got "stuck" just like in the story-- but we couldn't find our Katy to help them out, so they just stayed there!  I left T to feed Little Sis, but loved hearing him play with his cars. 

 

Five feet of snow is a lot!!   

Using stickers, I made a "How Many Inches" worksheet:

Finally, for math, I found a website full of Kindergarten Math. We played "Measure with Paperclips," "Measure with Inches," "Which Tool to Measure With," and "Math Lingo"; after one of the measurement activities, you could "set off" fireworks and another you could build your own house.  Definitely will be checking this site more more ideas!   

Art:  City Life, Snowman Art

Since this row happened around St. Patrick's Day, we put together a cut and paste Rainbow City activity: for a mix of St. Patrick's Day and big city life : )

Snowman Puzzle: I cut a out a snowman shape and then cut it into strips.  My son's job was to put it back together .  Afterwords, I asked T if he wanted to add a couple of buttons, and a couple turned into a snowman COVERED in buttons!

Science:  Snow

Well, I was hoping for one last snowfall... and it didn't come, so we just read a couple of books about snow. 

And, just for fun we made some yummy white chocolate covered banana snowmen-- YUM!

I usually have our next book somewhat planned and I have nothing yet!  I am thinking we will row "Clown of God" by Tomie de Paola to work in the rainbow/ St. Patrick's Day theme.... stay tuned!

We spent a couple years "rowing" with all three Five In A Row volumes, check out our All Time Favorite Rows here! 

Add more PLAY & LEARN SNOW Fun with these ideas:

• Snowflake I SPY & Graph Printable

• Snowy Day Alphabet Writing Tray

• Spin Art Snowflakes

• Mini Eraser Snowman Grid Game

• Snowball Number Recognition Game

• 5 Awesome Snowflake Projects