Weather All Around Us - Winter

We are in the midst of learning about the 4 seasons and today we came to Winter.  I loved this day.  It had some awesome lessons. 

First of all, I want to apologize in advance.  I had my camera settings set to outdoor lighting for the pictures we just took in the Fall leaves.   I didn't realize it until I had taken quite a few photos.  So they are pretty grainy. 

I had stations set up on this day because this first lesson about ice, could be a bit messy and so I wanted it at the kitchen counter.  This was for the lesson called Ice Hotel.  We talked about how there is an ice hotel in a country called Sweden.  I asked Peter to see if he could build with blocks and then had him try with ice.  I need to get those square ice cube trays and try this again.  Of course it was a bit difficult to build with rounded bottom ice cubes.  But they had fun trying.  He kept telling me they were slippery.  Good observation Peter!

Next Mother Goose Time had us to try using salt.  Peter sprinkled it on the ice and it melted the ice and roughed it up.  Made it a lot less slippery, but still hard to stack. 

While Peter was over at the counter experimenting with the ice, Lachlan was at his desk working with the I Can Read book.  First I got out the Sight Word Flowers and we practiced the two words, I and see.  At first Lachlan couldn't recognize the letter I because the font they used had the I looking like just a straight line.  He called it the number 1 first.  Then I opened up the book and the font of the word/letter I was of the other style.  So I took the Sight Word Flower and added, with a permanent marker, two lines, one at the top and one at the bottom.  This helped alleviate some confusion for Lachlan.

He read the book no problem after that.  Each page started with the two sight words we had practiced, I see.  Then the rest he could figure out by looking at the photos. 

Then it was Lachlan's turn to experiment with the ice and salt.  I asked Peter to go over to the desk and write his name on his book.  He got a bit distracted.  I had to remind him quite a few times what he was supposed to be doing. 

 Lachlan and I then started the lesson on Day 8 called Winter Tree.  Again, MGT provided us with Math Story Cards.  I love these things.  This month they were all about leaves.  We got leaves as our manipulatives in a bag on an earlier day this month.  The first card asked Lachlan to count out 12 leaves.  He decided to put them in a circle.

As we worked through these math stories, I helped Lachlan write them out as actual math problems.  I wrote it out as I read and he wrote the answer.  There were 10 leaves, 6 blew away, how many are left?  10 - 6 =?  Lachlan took away 6 and got his answer.  Here he is writing the equals sign and then writes in the number 4 with no hesitation. 

Peter who was supposed to be writing his name on the book at his desk came over and was hiding his creation behind his back to surprise me. 

Turns out he wrote his name above the nest and scribbled on most of the other pages.  That's okay, he had fun.

 Here, Lachlan is writing out the whole math problem himself.  5+7=12

Now it's Peter's turn to do some math.  He first counted out his 12 leaves.  Goose, our cat, decided to join us.

 Finally, I got Peter pinned down to do some reading.  I haven't been pushing him at all, but he really likes to do what brother is doing and he was picking up on these sight words almost faster than Lachlan was.  So we practiced the sight words again and then opened up the book.  He easily recognized the words and read through the book no problem. 

The last lesson called Winter World had us talk about Sweden again and how it snows there.  How do you travel the the places you go?  I reminded them of the movie Frozen and the sled Christoph uses through the snow.  Then we got out a blanket and took turns pretending it was a sled through the kitchen.MGT also has given us a beautiful world map an stickers with country names.  When we were done playing we added the Sweden sticker to the map. 

At this point we were all finished up with the 4 lessons from MGT but we were all still in good spirits so I wanted to fit in a bit more. 

Lachlan sat at his desk and I got out the cuisenaire rods.  He worked on the letter G page because that's the page he chose, it's not the letter we are working on this month, but that's okay.

He was following the pattern and then branched out on his own, putting them in order from tallest to shortest.

Peter loves to draw and create creatures and different animal laying eggs.  Lachlan has never been into drawing or coloring.  If I handed him something he would scribble all over it and give it back 10 seconds later.  Peter will spend forever coloring and drawing.  I love to see this focus from him.

After soccer practice, we ended our day by watching Disney's Frozen.  Yes, even my boys enjoy that movie.  I have to say, I do too.