Snowflakes!!!!!

Stephanie Homeschooling, Montessori Work Day, Reading and Writing, Science 2 Comments

Today I decided to go ahead with my snowflake study! I was waiting for some real snow to help with it, but rain is all I have right now! 🙂 So I got all the ideas I keep finding on pintrest together and we had our lesson. I started off by talking about the states of matter and how everything in the world is either a solid, liquid, or a gas. I didn’t go into the all the details of it, just an overview. I did ask Bunny what a few objects were and she got it!

So we moved on to a quick reminder of the water cycle. We talked about this in detail earlier in the fall while we rowed How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. So Bunny knew all about it, so we just reviewed it, and then I told her about how snow is water vapor in the clouds that froze into tiny crystals. These Crystals are attacked to each other and they stick to other crystals, and that makes a snow flake! ( I am not a snow expert. I read this article  and then used the pictures that were there too! Thanks God for the interent). I had on a tray some different shapes of white paper cut up and in a pile (like a cloud). As I told her about the crystals forming, I took out some shapes and started hooking them together to form a snow flake shape. (I based it off of the activity that I saw here). This was my hands on way of showing something that is really impossible to see! As I made the snowflake I also talked about symmetry. How if we split something in half, the halves look the same. I drew two simple shapes to demonstrate this, and then Bunny wanted to try it too! 🙂 Then I showed her some snowflakes that were magnified on the computer so she could see how real ones look up close. Some of them were so close you could see where the crystals came together. She really thought that was cool. It was a lot in information in a short amount of time, but I think that it is one of those lessons that is easy to grasp and can easily be reinforced while we are out in the snow (if we finally get some)!

 I did ask her to draw a picture and write a report when we were done and she did. She cut our some beautiful snowflakes and they she narrated a report on what we talked about. After we wrote the report, Bunny forgot that she didn’t tell me that snowflakes have six sides. So I suggested that she write it on the front, on her own! Well, she did. She sounded out all the words in “Snowflake has six sides”! I did help her remember the spacing, and to help her with the silent “e” on side, but she really did it all on her own! She confidence in improving and I was really proud! She is just flying through the reading and writing things. I know that all the books say that will happen, but I really didn’t believe them! 🙂 I guess its all about patience!

To end the day I pulled out the coffee filters I took from my mom’s house, and we made snowflakes! I folded the coffee filters for Pup and traces some lines for her to cut, and she did it on her own. Bunny was able to do it all on her own! I of course jumped in to play too! I love making snowflakes! 🙂 Pup made a few and had to take pictures of everything! Bunny did a great job, and made some very pretty, detailed snowflakes! She said that she liked that mine were so delicate! 🙂

I highly recommend using the coffee filters since they fold up easily, are all ready in the circle shape, and its easier to cut through all the layers! I saw this idea on Pintrest here. It was so much fun! The only thing that could have made this better, would have been some real snow to observe! 🙂 I hope you all are having some great winter fun too! Happy Schooling!