Snow Day!

Well, the promised storm DID arrive. The snow blew in just about the time it got dark last evening, and lasted through the night. For much of the night it was blowing sideways, and it was hard to tell this morning exactly how many inches we had gotten.


We took the day off school, like our public school counterparts. It took us several hours to dig out the driveway, working in shifts. We played in between. :-)




Parts of our yard had very little snow, and other parts had huge drifts. The pictures really don't do it justice!



The depth beside the whole length of our front sidewalk was a pretty consistent 10-11 inches.


Front of driveway, before shoveling. Notice the car tires? Almost completely visible! Yet off to the left was a huge drift up against our garage door.


After shoveling.


Sidewalk up to our porch, before shoveling. You can barely tell anything is supposed to be there.


And after shoveling.


It was a bitter storm, but sure looked beautiful today! We all enjoyed it immensely, and then came inside and enjoyed our nice warm house immensely too!

FIAR Co-op - Katy and the Big Snow, Part 2

Our second week reading Katy and the Big Snow, Lisa highlighted north, south, east, and west directions, which play a major role in the story. The children made directional "keys" (like you see on the bottom of maps) and then we did an activity using the keys.



Then we made snowflake snow globes! Lisa had found small three dimensional snowflake ornaments on clearance after Christmas, and she had the children insert these into a glob of clay that was glued to the underside of a baby food jar lid.



Then we filled the jar with water, leaving about half an inch at the top. We poured a Tbsp of glitter into the water.


We put special water-proof glue on the edges of the jar lid, screwed the lid onto the jar, and then hot glued around the outside edges of the jar.


Voila!


And for our snack, Lisa showed the children how to crush ice and we made snow cones!

FIAR Co-op - Katy and the Big Snow, Part 1

For our first co-op of the new year, we read the book Katy and the Big Snow. All of Virginia Lee Burton's books have been favorites of ours for years, so we were really looking forward to this!


In the story, Katy, who is a large snow plow, is sent to plow out the city after a really big snow. The doctor asks for help getting a patient to the hospital, the police chief asks for help in getting out to protect the city, the water department asks for help in getting out to fix a broken main, etc. So the children made an "occupations" matching card game, and we played several rounds.




We measured how high various depths of snow would be; first we used inches as our unit of measure and did it on paper.


Then we used feet as our unit of measure and measured against the children!



Lisa had us make rice krispie treats, which we.....


....shook in bags of powdered sugar to make edible "snow balls"!



YUM!

FIAR Co-op - Cranberry Thanksgiving, Part 2

The second week of Cranberry Thanksgiving Lisa focused on the New England states, where most cranberries are grown.



And since it was so close to Thanksgiving, and the first Thanksgiving happened in the New England states, she spent some time talking with the children about that.



Making the cranberry bread!





Thanksgiving turkeys. On each feather the children wrote something they were thankful for.

FIAR Co-op - Cranberry Thanksgiving, Part 1

Shortly before Thanksgiving we read the book, Cranberry Thanksgiving. This is a fun one!


I was busy teaching the writer's class that week, so Lisa was the FIAR teacher. She cut into a cranberry so the children could see the star inside.


Then she cooked some cranberries and the kids all tasted them! Most of the cranberries were put into cranberry bread. Yum.



They worked on cranberry wreaths.





Didn't they turn out great? So cute. We had two of these hanging on our door the whole month of December!

FIAR Co-op - The Rag Coat

I've gotten behind in posting about our weekly Five in a Row Co-op, and hope to get caught up this week. Here's the first.....

The Rag Coat is a sweet story about a girl who has a coat made for her from the rags of worn out clothing. She is at first not happy with this coat, but then is able to tell the other children at school a story about each piece of fabric, and they end up thinking it is the best coat ever!

Sally and Lisa, the FIAR teachers that week, first had the children make their own rag coat pictures out of pieces of colored tissue paper.



Then they took turns sewing their own patchwork pillow!



These were extremely popular and my boys have found all sorts of uses for them ~ mostly they are "beds" for stuffed animals!