Before Five in a Row: The Snowy Day

Where you live, you might planning your garden and enjoying a few tulips and buttercups. Where I live? We have some snow days left. Therefore, we recently rowed the wonderful book, The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats from the Before Five in a Row Curriculum.

We focused on the letter S this week, and we thoroughly enjoyed playing in our Letter S Sensory Bin throughout the week. Samuel especially loved seeing Spiderman and Superman in our bin.

This simple, letter S craft was a hit. After a time of reading our book, we used snowflake stickers to make the letter S.

One day Samuel really wanted to do some dot painting, so I pulled out this worksheet. He put a dot on each letter S, and then I would call out the remaining letters so he could add dots them as well. It’s a fun way to talk about letters.

We are big into superheroes around here. So I printed off a letter S and let him fill it with stickers of Spiderman. We practiced saying, “S-s-s-SPIDER-maaaaaannnnnn”!

We continued with dot painting to talk about the letter S in snowflake. I even helped him trace the word snowflake. He loves this sort of work, so I usually oblige.

I’m trying to incorporate lots of free drawing into our days. Coloring and drawing pictures is such a great learning experience for little ones. After reading The Snowy Day, I let him choose a drawing from the book he wanted to try drawing himself. He chose the snowy hill scene. He insisted that I draw Peter for him. We added a foam sunshine to indicate “a sunny day.”

We continue to use our Crayola Dry Erase Activity Center regularly. He loves tracing!

His coloring has come so far! We colored snowflakes every single day. He’s determined and detail oriented, so his hand wears out before he can complete more than a few coloring sheets at a time. This little coloring book was a big hit. He was so proud of himself for staying in the lines.

This was a simple craft. This was another fine motor practice. He didn’t care for shredding the paper. But I convinced him to help me do “just a few more.” He cut the branches from the brown construction paper. Then we glued everything on. Peter was his idea and again, my artistic skills really shines through, don’t you think?

Even though we did some table work, much of our time during the week was spent playing in the snow and doing science experiments.

This was a lot of fun and great fine motor strength building! You can learn how to create your fizzy snow dough sensory experience at Life Lesson Plans.

The empty ketchup bottle was a challenge for him. His little hand muscles got a good workout!

In the story, Peter puts a snowball in his pocket to take home. He’s sad when it disappears. This was a great opportunity to talk about why and how snow melts. We even talked a lot about what we were going to do when the snow finally leaves our little land. Plant vegetables, plant trees, ride our bikes … But I digress…

I set Samuel up with some ice cubes, water (cold, warm, and hot), and some salt. We observed what happened to the ice when we poured each on top. This was totally fascinating to him!

The Snowy Day became a much loved book in our home. Samuel even requested for Daddy to read it most nights at bedtime. I’m glad we fit it in before all the snow melts from our neck of the woods!

Additional Resources & Where I Got My Printables:

• The Snowy Day printables @ Homeschool Creations
• Free Snowman Printable Packs @ Royal Baloo
• Winter Pack @ 3 Dinosaurs
• A to Z Letter Find @ Free Homeschool Deals
• Letter S Tot School Printables @ 1+1+1=1
• ABC Color by Number @ 1+1+1=1
• Q-Tip Painting Letters @ 1+1+1=1

Don’t forget to follow my FIAR Pinterest Board for more ideas!

You can see all our Before Five in a Row rowing adventures here.

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