Snow in Kentucky

We were surprised to see snow when we got up on our last morning in Kentucky. We've only had snow once this year so it was nice to see except that we had to drive home in it. The roads in KY weren't bad, but they were in Virginia. There were times we couldn't even see the road and some cars were sliding all over the place.

The snow was pretty to see on the mountains, but I sure am glad to be home where it looks more like spring.

Katy and the Big Snow

I've been collecting books for this study for a while and watching the weather forecast in the hopes we could do it when it snowed. Unfortunately, the only snow we've had was during Christmas break. We've had spring-like weather the last couple weeks so I gave up on snow and decided to go ahead.

Here are some of the many snow books we read during the week.

In addtion to reading Snowflake Bentley, we watched this video about Wilson Bentley.
To go along with reading Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, we watched this where you can hear Robert Frost recite the poem. For fun, we also watched this version from The Muppet Show.
The Story of Snow: The Science of Winter's Wonder by Mark Cassino was good in helping the kids understand about the different types of snow crystals, how they're formed, their size, and why each of them is different.
The kids really liked Snow Globe Family, which was a book we hadn't read before.


When you read about snow, you have to make coffee filter snowflakes. Molly said she thought this would be boring, but then it was fun. It didn't really hold Colin's interest though. He made one and left. The girls made a huge stack.

We also made crystal snowflakes. Here are the girls with their snowflakes made from pipe cleaners and string.

We put boiling water and borax in a jar and then added food coloring.

After mixing it all together, put the snowflake in the jar. The snowflake is hanging from a popsicle stick.

After a few hours, they looked like this.

We also made snow themed food.

Meatloaf and mashed potatoes snowman

Snowball cookies

Tortilla snowflakes

I made each of the kids 3 circle pancakes. Then they had mini M&Ms, marshmallows, chocolate chips, and sprinkles to decorate them.

We learned about responsibility, running a city, stop signs, snow, blizzards, and what makes snowflakes unique. The kids made their own snow similes to review from when they learned what similes were during our study of Owl Moon. I reviewed compound words with Caleigh. We also reviewed compass roses and directions.

Snow Fun

Even getting a dusting of snow is exciting here so 6-7 inches is a big deal. The kids were thrilled to wake up to snow the morning after Christmas. They had a hard time waiting until warm clothes could be found to go out. It's been a long time since we lived somewhere we expect much snow so there was lots of digging through closets and the garage in search of things to wear. Luckily, Colin still had some things he has outgrown that the girls could wear.

Colin pulling the girls

That ended with everyone falling

Snow

It snowed in Charleston for the first time in 10 years, but we missed it. We were in Wilmington, NC at the time. Luckily, it snowed there too so the kids got to see snow. They were very excited since it's been a year since they've seen snow. We took them to the beach so they could play in the snow for a little bit before heading home.













Unfortunately, there were only small patches of snow left when we got home.

Colin's birthday and snow

The kids were so excited to see it snowing last night. It's only snowed one other time since we've lived here. Colin said God sent snow for his birthday present. Luckily, the snow was still around when they got up this morning. Chad had already taken the day off for Colin's birthday. We had planned to take them out somewhere, but they were happy to stay home and get to go out to play in the snow.









Colin decided he wanted to decorate his own Star Wars cake this year. He drew everything out on paper. I helped him get the outline on the cake, but he did most of the decorating.

 







I can't believe he's already 9 years old.