Snowy Book Club: The Snowy Day, No Two Alike and Snowmen at Night

Our Mommy and Me Book Club is small (mostly because I wanted to include all the kids in Caroline's class at church and if we invited the class above or below her age, then, well, it would be huge.) Our numbers are usually 3 or 4 kids and their moms each week with the occasional 5-6 kid day and younger siblings thrown in too. I like it when there are 4-5 kids. More friends just make all the activities I plan more fun, I think! I loved having 2 newbies this week since Cl and Ce had never been before. They fit right into our play!

We started off with No Two Alike and the kids loved it! We talked about what makes US unique and special while still finding commonalities we share with others. An adorable book and the kiddos loved taking turns finding animals on the page. 

From that bird/snow book, it was a natural transition to felt/finger play: 

2 Little Blackbirds

Two Little Blackbirds sitting on a hill (hold 2 fingers in front of you, one from each hand)

One named Jack, one named Jill (lift one pointer finger and then the other)

Fly away Jack (hand behind back)

Fly away Jill (other hand behind back)

come back Jack (hand comes back to front)

come back Jill (other hand comes back)

Two little blackbirds sitting on a hill. 

One named Jack, one named Jill.

 We did 3 verses (hill= jack and jill, cloud = quiet and loud, snow = fast and slow). It can be chanted or even sung.

The kids really got into this and loved doing the hand motions along with the poem. When I'm doing the felt I never take pictures, so this pic is afterwards during free play when the kids wanted to do the felt story themselves. 

Our next book was The Snowy Day. Some of the kids had read this book before and were quick to tell me how it ends (with the snowball melting in his pocket) before we even got to that point in the story. 

We sang "Snowflake, Snowflake, Little Snowflake" from Super Simple Songs (the video is adorable and you must go watch it with your kids if you haven't yet) and used our foam snowflakes to 

dance with while we sang. After they were sort of familiar with the song, each child got to choose where they wanted the snowflake to fall. We actually did this AGAIN when Gwen got home from Kinder. She wanted the snowflake to fall on her nose. :) (ps. Mommy, this photo is for you-- bc you said you wanted to see what she looks like with tooth #7 lost)

Of course, we had to have a snowstorm at the end with snowflakes falling everywhere!

Caroline tried to rescue the fallen flakes and put them back with their 'families'. :)

I was planning to read Snowmen at Night last, but actually ended up omitting it because the attention of the kids was waning (new kids and younger siblings, ya know. Gotta be flexible!). I opted to include Once There Was a Snowman song I'd planned to follow the book because I thought the kids would love it. And they did! I think we sang it 4 or 5 times! It was a great way to end the circle time.

They are melting... it happens a lot faster in song than in real life! :)

We made name snowmen for our craft (I guided their hands to write their names on each circle, then they glued them on and added snowman features and snow)

 I like that Caroline's snowman has feet... She is so funny!

  We finished off the book club with homemade frozen yogurt. The kids that got here early helped me make it and it was ready right about the time we were finished with everything. Perfect ending!

I loved the creativity displayed during free play--- Cl insisted that his train was driving through a snow storm. He wanted me to take a picture of his handy work. :)

We had a great time! I can hardly wait for our next book club on Penguins! :)

Snow: Chillin at Preschool

Appropriately, the weather provided us with snow this week to accompany our snow-themed preschool! 

We did some Upper and Lower case letter matching with this cute snowman I made. The letters attach with velcro. I observed that Caroline gravitated towards the easy ones (Ss Ww Oo Cc) and completely avoided the harder ones. Notice her little tongue there? She was thinking hard! I realized half way through that she really didn't KNOW all that many of her lower case letters or was mixing them up. At that point, rather than ask her to find and create her own matches, I put on the lower case, identified its name for her, had her repeat it back to me, then asked her to find the big one that goes with it. This version of the activity was much better received! I'm sure we can come back to it again for the harder version when she is ready. ;)

We have been working on her writing. Honestly, I don't expect anywhere near perfection here, I just want her to practice holding the utensil and get her hands used to making motions to create letters. Caroline really enjoys it when I guide her hand with mine, which we do often, but when I am holding Emmett during school, that doesn't work so well. :)

Sometimes the simplest math is the most fun! Caroline is really good at sorting. She likes to do it too and will begin sorting objects unprompted throughout the day. Tiny things in parades, toys on the shelf... and in this case, snowflakes. This was just a bag of cheap foam snowflakes that came in three different colors and two sizes. I first directed her to sort the sizes. Then we counted each pile and she had to declare which one had most and which had least. Then we repeated the activity sorting the colors into three piles. She loved this and was devastated later in the week when she had to share these foam snowflakes with friends at our Mommy and me book club!

I threw in a little science with pics of real snowflakes in large and micro pics for matching. I planned to use these with a magnifying glass to increase the 'scientist' authenticity, but last minute I couldn't find the mag. glass and didn't feel like venturing into the frigid garage to see if it is stored away in the summer box (since we used it all summer to look at bugs). I found the idea here, but opted to make my own with color to aide in the matching process (and because the artist in me is fascinated by the rainbow of colors in a single flake's crystals!). If anyone wants a copy for printing, I'm happy to send it. Just leave your email in the comments. ;)

For some reason, Caroline REALLY wanted me to take a picture of her socks... silly girl! :)

We read Snow (Rylant) (I love the poetic quality of the text and the warmth of the illustrations), Snow (Shulevitz) (we counted snowflakes on each page until there were too many), Owl Moon (which was a little too much text for Caroline, but she enjoyed the gorgeous illustrations), Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Frost--- DO look for the illustrated version by Susan Jeffers! What a great introduction to classical poetry!), Sneezy the Snowman (Caroline LOVED my silly melting voice and used it herself when she retold the story to me :), and Snowmen at Night (Gwen also loved this one-- they were both drawn to the pickle-nosed snowman in particular, which I found interesting). I didn't do Snowflake Bentley with Caroline because I didn't think she had the attention span for it, but for slightly older children it is a great snowflake science book that pairs beautifully with the large and teeny snowflake matching activity!

and of course, what could be more appropriate for gross motor than outside playing in the snow? We have done that a lot this week.

We continued the snow theme for book club, but I'll save those books and activities for another post. Hope you all are enjoying chillin with your loved ones!