Katy and the Big Snow
When we read books like Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton, it makes me both thankful and a bit sad that we don’t experience a true snowy winter. Since we already spent one sunny week focusing on snow (see The Snowy Day), we spent most of our time with Katy talking about the different things that make up a community. (There are lots of ideas for related conversations in the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 1).
I printed and laminated the “community helpers cards” from HomeSchoolShare.com‘s resouces for Katy. I had intended to play “memory” with them, but Ian found it challenging enough to just match up the pairs. The boys are definitely into trucks, so they enjoyed watching the Mighty Machines episodes “In the City!” (from season 1) and “In the Snowstorm!” (from season 2) on Netflix. Ian also really liked a video that has orchestral music written to go along with the story.
He spent a long time poring over the “map of Geoppolis” in the book and figuring out what each little picture around the edge represented. So I used that concept to make a map of our area, including all the places we visit on a somewhat regular basis: the zoo, children’s museum, church, friends’ houses, Daddy’s work, etc. I just sketched in the main roads with pencil and numbered each place of interest. Then I copied little pictures of each place into a document, printed them all out on one page, cut them out and pasted them around the edges with the corresponding numbers. (I’ve blurred the edges for privacy, but I wanted to share the idea because Ian loved it!) He asked about the compass on it and it gave us a good chance to discuss directions.
Our messiest (and therefore probably the most fun) activity was playing with shaving cream (almost a whole can!) and construction vehicles out on our glass patio table. We actually did this activity twice, one time using whipped cream on a tray with some friends who were visiting. They loved licking their fingers afterward, but the “snow” melted pretty quickly so it wasn’t a very long play time. I’d definitely stick with shaving cream next time.
To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.” Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.