School Time: Week 18 (Snow and Snowmen)

Yes, we took a break from our letter of the week lessons.  We had a lot of fun focusing on snowmen this week. The week started with a "Build Your Own Snowman" muffin tin.

And we built a Shape Snowman:

They thought they were fun to play with.

Anyhow, we had 

1 triangle nose

2 star eyes

3 oval buttons

4 sided rectangle and square for the hat

5 half spheres (split peas) for the mouth.

And the snowmen had to come and listen to our story about their friends, Snow Party by Harriet Ziefert.

This was a really cute book about snowmen who come out at night (in case you are concerned it does say "by magic" which I edited when I read it at play group.) They were having a party to celebrate the Winter Solstice (another part that gave me concern as I first started to read, but it just mentions how they are celebrating the first snow on the first day of winter).  They prepared the party grounds and threw a huge party. I loved the little details as we noticed what all the snowmen were doing.  

We also read a few other snow related books.

In The Snow by Sharon Phillips Denslow is a story that introduces lots of different animals as they come out to eat the seeds the little boy laid out.  It was fun waiting to see who would be next, "coming in the snow."  If you pay attention to the illustrations you can get a glimpse of who will be next.  I love the details of the footprints left behind too.

Another book I enjoyed sharing was Danny's First Snow by Leonid Gore.  This was another story with great illustrations that you can share with your children.  It is Danny the bunny's first snow and as he goes outside to explore he finds new friends.  All the bushes and trees now look like animal friends and he plays with them.  The children enjoyed finding the animals in the snow.  Very well done and cute story.  I especially liked the ending when Danny tells his mom he knows what snow is today and can't wait to see what it is tomorrow.

We have also been reading books from a site called We Give Books.  For every book we read they will be donating a book to the charity we chose.  A cute snowman book we found was Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner.  This book shares a fantastical tale of why snowmen appear lopsided or worn down in the morning.  You have to read this book to see all the fun activities that the snowmen get involved in during the night.

One of the reasons I decided to do a snowman theme was the books we had been reading.  Another was this fun recipe for Melted Snowman Cookies I found at Adventures-In-Mommy-Land.  We decided to make them to take to, where else, playgroup.

After mixing the dough the girls pressed out the cookies.

I iced them at night so they would set and Steven microwaved the marshmallows and placed them on the cookies.

In the morning Steven decorated them and let the girls have a turn.

Aren't they adorable?

We shared them at playgroup.  Guess what, I forgot my camera.  Oh well.  However, when we got home Steven and I got to take pictures of us building a real snowman.  We had decided to play outside while Steven kindly prepared lunch.  The snow was packing so well, I thought it would be fun to make a snowman, especially because it fit our projects so well.

Amelia seemed to think she had to go all the way to the back of the yard to gather snow.  Ummm.

Our snowman was praising God, so that is how the girls posed too.

Our snowman had broccoli eyes, a mini carrot nose, soda cap mouth and a candy cane pipe.

Then we painted a snowman family portrait.  The girls made the snowman with milk cap lids.

Then we glued on paper towel strip scarves, carrot shaped noses and cotton ball snow. And the girls drew on eyes, mouth and buttons.

Yes, Amelia has a flying snowman.

Here's Tabitha's

I also created a Snowman Lower Case Upper Case Letter Match Game. The snowmen (which I Googled) have scarves onto which I wrote the lower case letters.  Then I printed out hats (yes, Google images again, in case you are wondering, whatever I am looking for, whether for projects or my word cards, I will type in [that word] coloring pages). On the hats I wrote the capital letters.  While I did the entire alphabet, we only concentrated on the letters we have done so far this year.

And Hannah wanted to help too.

No, the girls didn't want her too. If you notice, next to Hannah is the Peek a Book I just received in the mail that I won from the giveaway over at JDaniel4's Mom's blog. We just love this book.  I love the sweet rhymes and lift a flaps that aren't going to fall apart on a little baby.  It is a cloth book with varied flaps using different material which enclose different sounds.

I'm am linking up to