This was a great little book. It's amazing what we found in this fun story, Katy and the Big Snow. It's a lot of work and time to do all this, but so worth it!
Social Studies: Responsibility
This is a great book for talking about responsibilities in and around a city. I found a great use for these community block play people I picked up a while back. The boys would hold these while we read the story, and when it got to the part in the story they would hold up the worker that was calling for help. I got to thinking that since not everybody has these great little people on hand that you could always print up some pictures of city workers and glue them to sticks to use while reading the story as well.
My boys loved having these to hold, and if I started reading without them they would quickly get them. It made story time very interactive. Good for wiggly little boys. Although, they didn't have too hard a time holding still for this story. We also talked about the responsibilities each worker might have.
Social studies: Map skills
We talked about directions, north, south, east, and west. We looked at the compass rose in the book, and noticed how it was at an angle. My boys understood that! I love that they got it. They each filled out the directions on a compass rose for their lapbook. Then, top it all off, they wanted a real compass to play/explore with. So we picked up some cheap ones, and we had a little lesson on how to tell which direction you are going. They had a good time finding their way out of the store!
Maps. We talked about "Geopolis," and how it isn't a real place. But, it could represent any place. I told them what "Geo" and "Polis" stand for as the manual suggests. Then we colored/painted a "Land of Make Believe" map. I had them glue their maps to brown paper bags to give it a treasure map look.
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| Aaron's map |
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| Aric working on his. He chose to color |
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| Aric's map |
We made signs out of popcicle sticks and clay, and talked about what each sign was telling us. The boys loved this. They turned out pretty cute, and I plan to save them for future "city" building.
Then they used their signs to make an imaginary geoppolis with their trains. I also pulled out our highway letters, and we had fun spelling Geoppolis.
Math: Counting by 5's
There's a great lesson on counting by 5's in this story. Actually, there are LOTS of counting possibilities in this story. We counted telephone poles just on the cover. There are trucks to count. There are numbers on the map to match up to different buildings in the city. We did those things, but we really had fun with 55 horse power Katy, and counting by 5's. On one page it counts the horses by 5's. My boys each filled out a little book with 5 horses on each page, and practiced writing by 5's the numbers from 5-55. Wow, that's a lot of 5's!
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| Aric writing his numbers |
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| He did pretty good! He's 4, so I had to write the number down for him to copy it. |
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| These are Aaron's numbers. He's pretty good with counting by 5's, he didn't need much help counting or writing them. |
The finished pictures!
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| Aric's picture |
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| Aaron's picture |
Five in a row storytime with friends
I decided it would be really fun to have some friends join us for one of our "rowing" days, so we had them come on a Wednesday morning. First I read the story to all the kids. It really looks like they aren't paying any bit of attention, but they actually did really well. They all listened, and we talked about a few things. I even have the people out, and gave them each a few of them to hold until their part of the story came up.
We were also sitting on our "blanket of snow." I pulled out a sheet, and it just happened to have snowflakes on it, how perfect was that?!
Art: Salt pictures
After we read the story, we had a little craft/art project. They used glue and salt to make a picture. I really wanted to make a picture of Katy for a craft, but I couldn't find anything that would work. The paper we did these on is the same color that is in the book, an aqua-blue-ish color, that contrasts with the snow really well. That's why I chose that color. I forgot to talk about that to the kids, but oh well. If you notice in this picture also the table cloth on the table is an old sheet that I drew a picture of Katy on. I love letting them draw on these "tablecloths" the things that they learned. These salt pictures were pretty fun.
Fun with snow
After the craft we all had some fun with snow (aka shaving cream)! It was a blast. I even threw the people in there, and some cars for them to drive through the snow. The cars got stuck of course, just like in the book.
Finally, we finished off our story time with friends having hot chocolate of course!
I'm really not sure why my kids are making such funny faces in this picture. Oh well, they make me laugh!
MMmmmm! Hot Chocolate!
That wraps up our fun with Katy and the Big Snow! We had so much fun with this book, and we didn't even get to everything! Some other things we did that aren't pictured: Katy and the big snow lapbook, snowflake matching game, and reading some other snow related books.
Here are the links for all the great ideas I found:
- Salt and glue pictures from Totally Tots
- Katy and the big snow lapbook at Homeschool share
- Measurement activity from Too Many B's
- Hot chocolate party from Delightful learning
- Highway letters from make learning fun
- land of make believe map from FIAR circle
Desiree
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