Snow!

We've just finished our mini-study of snow. It all started with our FIAR lessons on Katy and the Big Snow.

We were so excited to find, in our plethora of small vehicles, a bright red snowplow! Little Man used it to clear the roads on his town mat:

We moved on to Snowflake Bentley, a book we just love, and we found a wonderful video at the library that intersperses illustrations from the book with actual pictures of Wilson Bentley, his home in Vermont AND lots of pictures of his actual photos of snowflakes! It was a gem and definitely worth looking for.

As it happened, there were several perfect snowfalls during this time. We could actually hold a black glove out our kitchen window and capture snowflakes to examine with the magnifying glass. Later, they actually landed on the window and didn't melt so it was even easier to look at them.

We learned all about the different types of snow in The Story of Snow:

and Little Man practiced making hexagons on his geoboard.

Next we made some gorgeous paper snowflakes.

We just had to read this beautifully illustrated version of Robert Frost's Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening:

which led us to look at some other wintery poems by Mr. Frost. Z-Man memorized this one, which he also used for copywork:

Dust of Snow

by Robert Frost

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

Tonight after dinner, we attempted to make edible snowflakes. I steamed flour tortillas until they were soft and then folded them up and cut the into, well, sort-of snowflake shapes. Then we fried them in oil and sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar - mmmmm. They were delicious but sort of brownish. I guess plain powdered sugar would have been a more aesthetically pleasing choice.

And that wraps it up! Next week, we'll be doing all things Iditarod. The race starts on March 5 and if you've never followed it, you just don't know what you're missing. We initially started following it four years ago because we thought it would be a great learning opportunity. Now we are officially hooked. I'll keep you posted!