Preschool Adventure Box: B4FIAR The Snowy Day

TOPIC: SNOW

This year I want to be a little less haphazard about my two little one’s activities.   A4 will continue to have her one hour school with me doing Mathusee Primer and Jolly Phonics.  I want to be more  purposeful about the fun school I do with the two little girls.  To this end I’ve created a Preschool Adventure Box and a written frame-work with which to organise my planning of the short units I do with them.

Every morning I set up a play dough table with themed cutters and a play board mat made from a laminated photocopy of the front of the book we are basing our unit of:

Making snowmen with white play dough and snowman cutters

• Read aloud go along books:

These were the little one’s bed time read alouds.  They were also available in the morning whilst the older ones were doing their chores and also during quiet time.

     

• Factual books

In the same vein as the fiction books, these were available in the morning and during quiet time to browse through.  My lovely mum went through Baby Animals with A4 alone and had her sight-reading the words of the animals.  The rest of the factual books were mainly used for their pictures rather than script.

     

Reading Snowy Day

And the Snowman

• Dress up and drama

For this unit we only needed our snow suits so we could all go out into the snow and do all the activities that the little boy did in the story.  Only it didn’t snow as much as expected, so we couldn’t make snow angels!  Ah well, an activity for another day!

B1 in our not very snowy snowy day

A4

Then of course we had to warm up inside in front of a roaring fire and hot chocolate snowmen.

Snowman hot chocolate in a jar with material for a scarf, mini ring doughnut with icing pen eyes and mouth for a face, half a grape for a hat, a straw to hold everything together and a sprinkling of icing sugar for snow!

I also went through all the plastic animals and picked out some winter type animals that we had read about and popped them into a large cat litter box with some shaving foam.  It was going to be real snow, but we seem to be a little short.  Ahem.

All ready to play with their ‘snowmen’

So much more fun when your sisters join in the fun!

Lots of mess = lots of fun

Oh dear!!!

• Trays

I aim to make 6 trays each week.  The little ones will have three each to begin with and then swap over.  A4 has normal trays, whereas I have used the high-sided (never before used) small cat litter trays, which contains the materials rather well!  Each set of three contains the following:

1. A printable with art supplies.
2. Something tactile/sensory
3. Puzzle or shape activity

A4 with a snowman bracelet making kit

Snowman bracelet

I cut out a snowflake, stuck it on an old folder and let A4 stick glitter all over it

She then used the stamps I had made for B1 and surrounded her snowflake with lots of white painted ones

I photocopied the front page of A Snowy Day and cut it into puzzle pieces. L10 helped A4 do the puzzle

Snowy Day printables from Homeschool Creations

I also did one very special tray activity with both my littles, which was so much fun and so successful regarding the end product that C10 exclaimed that she wished she was 4 again!  We made a snow globe out of Dolmio jars, water and a Lego figure:

I scratched the lids with a fork, smothered glue over it and stuck a snow creature from our big Lego zoo set. I left to set over night

I filled the jars with water and a bit of glycerin

Both children added silver and white snowflakes and silver and white glitter

We put the lid on and gave it a good shake

And then stood back and watched in wonder!!

• Games or group activities

We decided to tie dye some cheap white t-shirts blue, leaving behind white snowflakes where the material was tied.  That was the idea anyway! (They weren’t very, very snowflake like!)  We made enough t-shirts for all the children and decided that they would make lovely Christmas presents from one to another next year!

I prepared the t-shirts by tying handfuls together

A4 dumped a t-shirt into the cold water dye

And gave it a good stir

B1 watched mesmerised….

…until it was her turn to pop in a t-shirt

And give it a stir!  We then left them for 45 mins, rinsed them out and dried them.

• printables

http://www.dltk-holidays.com/winter/index.html

http://homeschoolcreations.com/files/Snowy_Day_Printables.pdf

• Food

Snow snacks (I want four snacks designed to be so easy that A4 can learn to do them alone with maybe one that A1 can do)  This will be the snack every one has after quiet time.

• Marshmallow snowmen:

A4 icing her snowmen

The men in all their snowy glory!

They ate these with a piece of fruit to make it a little more substantial.

• Snowman shaped wholemeal toast with peanut butter spread and chocolate buttons & eyes:

• Mashed banana with Angel Delight, frozen in an snow flake muffin tin, served with a marshmallow snowman:

Dumping the Angel Delight in the bowl of milk

Giving it a good mix

snowflake shaped muffin tin

Our almost healthy snack

• Snowball popcorn balls

It’s beginning to make me feel a bit queezy the amount of sugar everyone is ingesting this week!  Next week we’ll be doing Angus Lost so it’ll be much healthier savory stuff.

That said, learning to make these was so much fun!  We made the toffee from scratch and poured it over the pop corn, rolled it into balls and made some toffee popcorn balls:

Boiling up the ingredients to 270 degrees

Quickly mixing the toffee with the popcorn

Popcorn snow balls

http://www.wordplayhouse.com/2011/02/snowball-popcorn-balls.html

• Special B1 and Mummy activity

I make some snow flake stamps out of a block of wood and a sponge dish cloth:

I cut a sponge dish cloth into four, folded each into four and cut as I would to make a paper snowflake

I pinched a few blocks from the children and stuck the sponges on the blocks

Snowflake sponges ready for B1 to use!

A1 really enjoys doing anything with her hands so we filled a paint pot with white paint, gave her some black paper, the stamps and let her at it:

She really enjoyed these. I think I might make a different set for each unit we do

• DVD’s and YouTube videos and any other learning bits and pieces

I allow half an hour of screen time a day and one family dvd a week for my little ones.  This time watching something, especially if it is (loosely) related to their learning, is helpful in allowing me uninterrupted time with my older children.

   

Full YouTube version of The Snow Man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCEvL_hdN2A

The children also have an hour of quiet time a day.  For this A4  has a basket of toys and plays on my bed listening to a CD.  I also got hold of a cute basket which holds all her books for the unit, which she now insists taking in with her too!  The older ones do their school reading for an hour and A1 is fast asleep.

We own a puzzle of the Animals Of The World.  We built this up together and searched for all the winter or snow animals we had learnt about.  A4 knows her continents fairly well so I asked her which continent each animal we found was on.

• Thursdays special themed lunch

I was going to let the children have a picnic out in all the snow we were supposed to have.  I thought it would appeal to their sense of the ridiculous, but without snow I lost my enthusiasm somewhat!  I decided I would give them a ‘Snowy Day’ muffin tin meal instead:

Muffin tin with a snowman shaped pancake

I gave A4 a muffin tin with whipped cream in a squeezy bottle (snow), black and green grapes (scarf), satsumas (nose, arms), banana slices (hat, mouth), chocolate sauce for sticking everything down and chocolate chips for buttons and eyes. Oh and a glass of milk with a milkshake straw to wash it all down!

A4 thoroughly enjoying herself!

And the one I made for B1. I thought she was a bit too young to do one herself- she disagreed!

• More inspiration

http://snowflakebentley.com/WBsnowflakes.htm

http://quinceandquire.typepad.com/quince_and_quire/2011/01/images-of-snow-crystals.html

http://jennwa.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/popsicle-stick-snowflake-and-poem.html

http://theeducatorsspinonit.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/snowmen-candy-bars-make-great-teacher.html

http://www.thejoysofhomeeducating.com/2012/01/snowflake-craft-and-school.html

http://blog.imaginechildhood.com/imagine-childhood/2009/12/holiday-snowballs.html

http://www.thecraftycrow.net/2010/02/snowflakes-from-doilies.html

Linking Up:

http://fiveinarow.com/blog/2013/03/04/how-others-use-before-five-in-a-row-blog-hop/