Three Plus Two

Learning with Lego

I've been having a hard time getting enthused about homeschooling lately, so I decided it was time to not worry so much about "making progress" and to do something fun instead.

It's the flag of Denmark!

Cue: this Lego unit/lapbook, which I first learned about on the Aussie Pumpkin Patch blog last fall.  I'd tucked the idea away in the back of my mind, and these dreary, sick January days seemed like a good time to present it to my Lego-obsessed 7 year old.  Farmerboy is not an independent reader so he really couldn't do this unit independently, and he didn't have much interest in making a lapbook, but we had fun watching all the videos and doing the "building challenges".  Gareth and Katydid joined in on occasion, too.

We've only gone through the first 3 days because Pip had to make an unscheduled visit to minor medical on Thursday with an infected finger.  Farmerboy is looking forward to doing more learning with Lego this week... so much so that I'm afraid I'm going to have to come up with my own building challenges for many more days!

Farmerboy's taxi-truck from Day One... we couldn't find the taxi instructions, so Farmerboy made up his own.

The ship from Day 2... It's a speedboat.  His finger is hiding the prop he added to the back.

 
Katydid's mosaic from Day 3... a treasure chest.

We also used the nice spread on Lego manufacture in the book See How It's Made and found a good article about the science of how Lego works (among other things), which I read aloud to everyone.

Farmerboy has now added "Professional Lego Builder" to "Paleontologist" when asked what he wants to be when he grows up.  Next I think he will probably answer, "Nathan Sawaya".

 

 

Winter Term, Week 6 and 7: Spelunking and a little glitter

Week 6: Valentines, Valentines, Valentines:

 

Katydid, wearing her rose-colored glasses (they actually are rose-tinted, to help with her headaches) looks very Valentine-ish, doesn't she?

 

Most of the Valentines this year involved large amounts of glitter.  I think this is Pip's. Pip wasn't interested in making Valentines at first.  Instead, he spent a few days making cards for himself. You can see one of them above the Valentine in this picture, but most of them only involved drawing with markers and me writing dictated letters: W G M T... that sort of thing. I wish I had a photo, but I think the cards have all been used past the point of photographing by this point.

Pop was much more interested in the artistic value of Valentines:

 

Or, perhaps more importantly, the artistic value of glitter.

Chipmunk, on the other hand....

 

... Chipmunk just wanted to bite the tips off the markers. So he was confined to his high chair.

 

You can't tell that he colored his nose, mouth, and cheeks orange in this picture, can you. But he did. And his tongue.

Week 6 AND 7: Caves

Inspired by One Small Square: Caves, Farmerboy took his brothers "spelunking" in the closet. (In the closet because it's dark in there with the door closed.) Here you see him with his caving outfit: an equipment bag full of "food" and "first aid", and a camping lantern.

In week 7, we finished reading The Story of Caves, which ended up having quite a bit of information about Howes Caverns, the caverns we hope to visit soon. I suggested that Farmerboy might want to make his own cave one morning, and he decided to make one out of a cardboard box. Pretty soon Katydid and Gareth were also in on the fun:

 

Gareth's cave has stalactites, stalagmites, natural arches, fried egg formations, and gypsum (the white stuff on the wall.) It also has a stream.

In Farmerboy's cave, the stalagmites are made from clay. He also put fried egg formations and gypsum in his cave, and also cave bacon, bats on the wall, and a pack rat's nest in the "twilight zone" in the front of the cave. Then he got his Playmobil guys to be "spelunkers" (no plain old caving in our house). This particular Playmobil guy is outfitted with camera, flashlight, and laptop... in case he wants to look up the animals he finds.

To be honest, the suggestion to make caves was thrown out in desperation, but I was very pleased with the result.  I had no idea that Farmerboy had absorbed such a lot of information about caves.  In fact, he enjoyed this project so much that he has continued to play with and tinker with his cave for a good part of two days. He named his cave "Carlsbad Trap."

While the big kids made caves, Pip and Pop made owlish masks out of paper plates and also decorated some big cardboard letters I picked up from Dick Blick. I had been looking for these things for a long time, and happily, the little boys enjoyed decorating them:

 

Pop glued ANIMAL shapes on his A, but Pip is all about the markers. The ones Chipmunk hasn't eaten, anyway.

During week 6, we also participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count. Alas, we didn't see too many birds. But we did have pine siskins. And a couple of blue jays...

 

We also (collectively) decided that Gareth is going to be working on a high-school level designed-by-us paleontology course, which he is excited about. He's particularly excited by our discovery that some trilobite beds are just down the road. But those, unfortunately, will have to wait until the snow melts.

Week 9: Focus on Thanksgiving

   

Farmerboy and Pip made these turkey collages last week.  Pip made the one on the left and Farmerboy's is the one on the right.  They're "hand" turkeys, of course -- Katydid helped Pip trace his hand and make eyes and beak -- but I got out the Murray McMurray catalog and Storey's Illustrated Guide to Poultry Breeds for reference when Farmerboy asked what turkeys looked like.  He knows what wild turkeys look like, because we see them in our field (and garden), but domestic turkeys are different.  I'd originally supposed that the kids would color the feathers all sorts of different colors, the way we did when we were in school.  But it appears that when you provide a child access to nature and books and the freedom to make art as they choose, what you end up with is realism.  I provided some structure by giving them the books to look at, as well as asking them what colors belonged to November skies and grass and cutting out the grass so they could glue the stems down.  (I introduced the grass by saying, "Would you like some grass?"  If they had said no, that would have been okay.  But they both liked the thought of showing the turkey in the field.)  I think the results are quite interesting.  (And I wish I had a better display than the bulletin board!)

Mostly we did not do a lot of themed art this week, though.  We did, however, take a break from the Greeks to read a few Thanksgiving books. 

We read three in the mornings during our family read aloud time:

• The Thanksgiving Story
• Squanto, Friend Of The Pilgrims (Scholastic Biography)
• Thanksgiving on Thursday (Magic Tree House #27)

I sometimes feel as if Farmerboy gets neglected as far as choosing books to read, sandwiched in between two upper elementary kids and two three year olds as he is.  He's in kindergarten this year, and I wanted him to experience some of the same things my older kids experienced at his age.  You're only 5 once, after all.  We've been reading The Children's Plutarch: Tales of the Greeks (Yesterday's Classics) and Farmerboy has been enjoying it just as much as his older brother and sister, but every now and then it's nice to take a break and focus on a holiday.  So the books I chose to read aloud were ones we had on our shelves, that I thought would appeal specifically to Farmerboy, but that I had never really read aloud to anyone before -- at least not in their entirety.  Happily, he bit: I think there were even some tears on Wednesday when I had to stop reading Squanto so we could do our chores.

Gareth also read 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving (I Am American) and . . . If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 to himself.  1621 is a National Geographic book with lots of photos from Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts, and a recipe for "Stewed Pompion" that we may try next year when I will not accidentally leave the pie pumpkins outside on the front porch in teen-degree weather.  (Oops.)

And there have been picture books, too:

• Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving
• The Pilgrim's First Thanksgiving
• 1, 2, 3, Thanksgiving!
• Thanksgiving Is for Giving Thanks
• Gracias The Thanksgiving Turkey (Scholastic Bookshelf: Holiday)

I didn't get any new Thanksgiving books this year, so this list is comprised of books we've collected over the years and enjoyed.  The copy of 1,2,3 Thanksgiving -- a favorite since Gareth was 3 -- is now falling apart, and it looks as if I'm going to have to pay a lot more money than I originally did to replace it! 

The kids did more than just read Thanksgiving books and make turkey collages last week, but I think I'm going to have to split this review into two parts.  Andy has taken off all week and we're preparing for a visit from his mom and dad.  This afternoon he took all the kids to the farm where we're getting our turkey.  Seeing as how I am kidless for the afternoon, I'd better get back to work!

Pond, Marsh, and Stream

We kicked off our pond study on Monday with a walk to the pond in the woods behind the house.  Andy was home after working most of the weekend, so we made it a family affair.  (Actually, I wouldn't have taken the kids if he hadn't been there.  It would have been too hard with a baby on my back to help the twins over slick rocks, pull them out of the muck, and keep them from falling into the water.  Luckily, the pond -- or ponds, actually -- are  only a quick walk from the house, so we can visit them often, as long as Daddy is around.) 

We collected two jars of pond water to bring home, so we could view some pond water samples under the microscope.  We also ended up with 3-5 tadpoles, a leech, a bunch of water bugs (the technical term, of course), and a whole lot of duckweed.  The water and its residents now inhabit a fish bowl on our china cabinet. 

Of course, I came right home and got to work on pond-related books.  Our library is fairly awful; the system it belongs to isn't that bad, but only 6 reserves per library card are allowed, and for some reason I can't get my card to work on the system.  (If we ever move again, my first question is going to be, what is the library like?  I miss the St. Charles County, Missouri library system like you wouldn't believe, although dealing with the anti-homeschooling librarian at the "children's" library was very, very annoying.)  Anyway, I do buy a lot of books, and most of the books I bought for the pond study I'm fairly pleased with -- and Farmerboy is enjoying them, too.  Seeing as how Farmerboy's relationship with being read to has, in the past, been somewhat turbulent, I am glad he is enjoying them.  Right now we're reading through One Small Square: Pond at the rate of several pages a day, and he has been in the possession of From Tadpole to Frog all week.  I'll post the rest of our books on the sidebar, hopefully soon.  I'm directing the bulk of this study at Farmerboy, in the hopes of luring him into kindergarten a little at a time, so the sidebar will be heavy on the picture books.  (Although I discover a series of books that I am excited about for Katydid: the Naturalist's Apprentice series, which includes a Pond-Watching book.  These we do have on reserve at the library -- our 6 book limit.  Sigh.)

Now, for the pictures:

Heading off into the woods... We use an ex-snowmobile path, which used to cut across our property.  The former owners did not want snowmobiles going across their property, so they blocked the path with a bunch of a rubble.  When we first moved in, the Snowmobile Club came to ask us if they could again run their snowmobiles in our field.  Andy politely told them no.  The snowmobiles moved across the street, where they can sometimes be heard and seen at the prime snowmobiling hours of 3 and 4 AM, and the rubble stayed to block the path on our land, just in case.  It makes a good path to walk on in the woods, though.

The seasonal stream that runs down the hill toward our house.  Yellow marsh marigolds are plentiful this time of year.  (An interesting aside: this site explains the history of marsh marigold's association with the Blessed Virgin and one of its other names, marybud.  Katydid had put a cupful of these blooms beside our statue of Our Lady of Grace when she discovered them in the woods, before we knew what they were.  I always think it's neat when connections like this are made.)

We crossed many mucky patches on our way to the pond... the result of a few days of rain. 

I think this is a raccoon track.   We didn't see any actual animals (I wonder why, considering the amount of noise we made), but we did see many signs of animal activity.

A deer track here, and just trust me that we saw some coyote scat.  (You don't want me to upload all the pictures of poop that I've found on my camera.  Not even in the name of science.)

(I had Chipmunk on my back, a mason jar in one hand, and the camera in my other hand... and apparently a big fingerprint on the lens.  Sorry about the smudges in some of these photos.)  Here we are at "The Pond".  There aren't very many places where once can approach the water, and the shore is quite marshy.   

Looks pretty slimy, doesn't it?  The whole surface is practically covered in duckweed.  I'm still not sure whether to call this a "pond" or a "swamp".

While the kids skimmed the water -- and argued over who had more tadpoles and who was going to take care of the tadpoles (Repeat after me:  The tadpoles belong to God.  The tadpoles belong to God...) -- I poked around with my camera.  This is all that remains of a road that ran through the woods.  The bank was shored up by these rocks.

Fiddleheads...

And now we're going to switch ponds, because Farmerboy wanted to see the stone wall that cuts through the woods.  There is another we place, directly behind our field, which is somewhat vaguely known as "The Swamp."  But when we headed there this time, we found that "The Swamp" now looked more like a pond than "The Pond".  It was also bigger than we remembered it.  We did not sample the water here, because we had no more jars, but I think it would be interesting to come back and take some samples so we could compare the water in both ponds.

Or swamps.  Whatever they are.

More uncurling plant life...

   

This pond (or swamp) has horsetails, which delighted Gareth.

I think this is a trillium -- not blooming yet.  I wanted to remember where it was.

More marsh marigolds, growing at the edge of the pond.  Or swamp.  Whatever it is, this is where the peepers live.  I should go outside right now and record them for you... at night, they are so loud, you wonder how many millions of them are back there.

Dawn recently posted about how her blog has become a stand-in for a nature journal.  This is also the case for me.  Katydid keeps a pen and paper nature journal, and I would love to as well.  But it's a lot harder to draw while holding a baby (or babies) than it is to hold a camera or type. 

It's a New Year!: Week in Review

This is what we woke up to on New Year's Eve...

And this is what we had on New Year's Day.

A little different than New Year's last year!

The amaryllis bloomed...

... and continuing with our winter botany theme, one of the choices of the week was to observe and draw any (or all) of our forced bulbs.  Gareth drew the amaryllis as it was just pushing its way out of the bud and turning red (the petals are pink at first):

The kids have been using the oil pastels a lot lately.  Their vibrant colors make them attractive, but they have a tendency to smudge.  On the other hand, this tendency to smudge makes them good to blend.  Farmerboy and Katydid have been experimenting with mixing colors.  ("Hey, Mommy!  Blue and red make purple!")

On the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, I set out some coloring pages for the kids to make booklets.  I took the pages from the Eucharistic Adoration Coloring Book, which I am 99.9% positive I discovered on Dawn's blog... I'm just not exactly sure when or where! (ETA: I did make copies of the "IHS" monogram, but I also had pages with other names for Jesus.  Which is what you see here.  We talked about all of them, but the kids chose which pages they wanted to color and to put in their booklet.  Actually, the booklet was a choice on the whiteboard in the first place.)

Fairies have recently become popular around here, at least with Katydid and Farmerboy.  Katydid has been reading from The Complete Book of Flower Fairies and with some of our Christmas money, we added Fairy Houses Everywhere, and checked Fairy Houses (the picture book) out of the library.  She has been making her own book of flower fairies:

Farmerboy has been drawing fairies, too... although his are considerably more, um, male:

Around the beginning of December, we finally got all our puzzle maps from Alison's.  Because December is its own little world, I put off presenting them to the kids (read: Katydid and Farmerboy) until after Christmas.  Katydid really has a hard time with geography, so my goal for the next two months is to focus heavily on geography.  (Around the end of February/beginning of March, we are planning on making a long trip to Tennessee, so at that point the big Montessori activities will have to give way to more mobile homeschooling.)  Happily, Katydid has also been requesting the mapwork, so my goals and her goals synch together nicely.  On Wednesday, she spent a long time working on the US map with a placemat map for reference.  Today I am finally labeling the control maps and realizing that our big atlas is somewhat out of date.

We've also begun to pick up history where we left off before we ventured down the Native American/explorer paths that took up our summer and much of the fall.  When I gave Gareth the book World War I to read on Veteran's Day, I didn't realize that his desire to read it meant that he was ready to move back to the trajectory we'd started last year, delving into the settling of the American West and the Civil War.  The Native American and Explorers trails we explored after we'd worked through the Civil War were just more exploration of the issues which made that particular era in time.  Once we'd gotten through some of the early explorers and uncovered the beginnings of the slave trade, the kids seemed satisifed and a little restless to move on.  I, of course, was a little behind but finally did manage to catch up.  We read The Silver Donkey as a sort of connector during December (and this book is really, really good, too), and now we've started fresh with the world as it leads up to World War I.  We started The Wizard of Menlo Park and Cheaper by the Dozen, and hopefully this coming week I'll actually have some experiments with electricity set up.  I'm also planning on reading (and strewing) books about the Wright Brothers.

Now, if you think this sounds a lot like Sonlight Core 4, you would be correct.  But this is Sonlight Core 4 done our way, which means that we've been reading these books for the past year and a half, supplementing like crazy whenever we find a subject we're interested in.  I do own the Instructor's Guide, but I rarely ever look at it.  The books are great, though, and with the state of our library, it is really, really nice to have the box of Sonlight books to plunder.  I do think we will go on to Core 5... I'm just not sure when.

And finally, wrapping up the week although I have no pictures because I forgot the camera... we met another homeschooling family on Friday afternoon for some welcome socializing, and on Saturday afternoon we drove up to the La Sallette Shrine (dedicated to Our Lady of La Sallette, like the National Shrine in Massachusetts) for our Little Flowers/Blue Knights Meeting.  We went sledding... had a very cozy Epiphany Mass... and talked about chickens with Father.  Because Father has turned his garage into a chicken coop.  It's a fun place to spend a Saturday.  The only mar on the day was Pip slicing open his ear on the corner of the Brother's table.  It did not, thankfully, require stitches.

And what about the twins, you ask? They have been amusing themselves by sneaking out in the mornings to play with Farmerboy's Playmobil guys:

But, shhh, don't tell anyone.

Boil it Down!

We made maple syrup today!  This afternoon Andy found 5 or 6 gallons of sap in the buckets and decided that was enough to make syrup.  Here's what the sap looked like when he and Gareth poured it in the pan:

He boiled it for two or three hours over a wood fire.  The wood was a little wet, so it did get kind of smoky.  After that time, the pan looked like this:

This stage was signaled by comments such as, "Hey, it really did turn brown!" and "How do we tell when it's done?"  At about this time, Andy came in for a pat of butter to throw on the pan when it boiled up too high.  The butter breaks the surface the tension, and the bubbles go back down.  (In Sugaring, the picture book by Jessie Haas, Nora flicks cream on the bubbles to make them go down.) 

Now came the tricky part.  Supposedly the syrup "sheets" when it's done: it drips off a spatula in sheets.  Or, supposedly, you can use a hydrometer to tell the same thing.  But we couldn't figure out how to use the hydrometer, especially with our shallow pan.  So we went with the sheeting technique instead.

(I say "we" but really, by this point Gareth had decided he was more interested in robots than syrup and wanted to come in, Katydid and Farmerboy were both sick and couldn't go outside in the first place, and I was playing musical babies trying to get them both to a)stay asleep, and b)sleep at the same time.  So "we" here means "Andy".)

The syrup was done while I was rocking Pop, and then apparently Andy had the realization that he was not prepared to get it out of the pan.  He came rushing in for receptacles, oven mitts, and ladles.  As soon as I could put Pop down, I ran out to help him.

Here's a picture of the finished product:

It's a little dark (I'm not sure we got it out in time) and a little smoky-tasting from all the woodsmoke, but that first cup of warm syrup still tasted pretty good! 

And what did we have for dinner tonight?  Well, pancakes, of course!

Sap's Rising

It's finally spring, and the sap is rising!

Yesterday our temperature hovered at near 60 until the rain moved in late afternoon.  After school and lunch we all ran outside to play in the warm, windy weather (and the cold, gooey mud, and all the puddles left on the driveway by the melting snow), and the kids made a beeline for the maple Andy tapped last weekend.  I was on twin duty, which meant I was busy running from one baby to the other, trying to keep them from running down the driveway to the road, falling into the remaining snow drifts, beating each other with snow shovels... that sort of thing.  (This only worked for about 30 minutes until Pip tumbled into a particularly BIG puddle and literally soaked himself head to toe.)  Katydid fussed with the bucket for a while, then ran back, yelling, "The sap's running! The sap's running!"

Alas, because I was so busy keeping track of the babies, I have no pictures.  But I had no idea that maple sap is clear, like water.  When I went to check the bucket (babies in tow), I thought at first that she must be mistaken, because it just looked like there was water in the bottom of the bucket, and some condensation around the tube.  But the big kids all tasted it, and they proclaimed it sap.  Gareth said it tasted a little like apple juice.  I didn't have a chance to taste, but I felt the "water", and it was definitely sticky.  Sap!

About five minutes after we came in, it started to rain -- hard -- then tapered off to a constant sprinkle, flung against the windows by a strong March gale out of the west.  When Andy got home, the kids immediately crowded around him to tell him about the sap... and out into the rainy evening Andy went, to tap the rest of the trees. 

This morning it's sunny and already in the lower 40's.  (I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be our high for the day.  Could the forecast be wrong, I wonder, or is it gluttony to wish for more 60's in March when you live in upstate New York?)  We plan on boiling sap tomorrow in our backyard fireplace (I knew it had to be good for something.)  And don't worry, if there are pictures to be taken, someone will be able to take them tomorrow!

(Andy has been reading the kids the book Sugaring Time, by Kathryn Lasky at bedtime.  He says it's been more helpful in learning how to sugar than the how-to books we ordered -- listed in this post.  The book, a Newberry Honor, is aimed at elementary/upper-elementary aged kids, and contains wonderful black and white photos along with a step-by-step description of the sugaring process.)

Backyard Sugarin'

Or front yard sugarin', in our case.

My dear husband has decided that we should tap the maple trees in our front yard this year and make our own maple syrup.  For some reason, I was under the impression that you need six good sized trees to make syrup in any quantity, but my husband got hold of Noel Perrin's book Third Person Rural last weekend at the used book store and he says we can get a quart a tree.  Imagine that -- a whole gallon of our very own maple syrup!

Sounds like the perfect homeschool project, right?  Outside in the cold with Dad, hauling buckets of sap to the fire in the backyard, maybe sucking on a little maple ice while you watch the fire...  We can read Miracles on Maple Hill and Sugaring Time and feel like Almanzo Wilder in Farmer Boy.  It might even be the perfect hands on unit.

Except that my dear husband conveniently neglected to remember that he has a bunch of business trips in March, so when he says we are going to make maple syrup, what that really means is, "Honey, I'm going to be at work every day and in Phoenix for part of the month, so it's going to be up to you to check and haul all these buckets and keep the fire going, all right?  I'm sure the babies will cooperate."

Well, anyway, he's reading Backyard Sugarin' and Making Maple Syrup: Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-51 and we're waiting for the imminent arrival of the Nearings' The Maple Sugar Book.  The local Agway sells taps, buckets, and lines.  (Last March we had been gone for a few weeks, and when we came back, the woods were strung with green rubber tubing.  "What the heck is that?" we all wanted to know, until it occurred to us -- sap!  Maple syrup!)  So I suppose we will be stocking up, and Mom will try to get motivated.  (I could use a pep talk here, in case anyone is interested.  The idea of making maple syrup sounds real interesting, but the logistics of trying to keep everyone out of the buckets and away from a fire while gallons of sap boil away to syrup is... well, a little daunting.) 

The first thing we'll have to do, though, is identify our trees.  I wish I had thought to press a few leaves in the fall, but all I have are the pictures I took. 

They're not red maples, because they didn't turn scarlet in the fall.  But are they Norway maples, silver maples, or sugar maples?  That is the question...

Snow

Fortunately for our winter studies, we now have some snow.  Before it got too cold to go outside, the kids spent a day sledding down our big hill.

That streak of white is our sled run.  Andy mows it every late summer/fall so the kids can use it in the winter.  (I say "every late summer", but this is only the second year we've been here.  You get the idea, though.)

For a little perspective, this is a zoom photo from the back deck of Gareth rocketing down the hill.  The kids got new sleds for Christmas and haven't been able to use them until now, so they were pretty excited.

   

On Friday it was too cold to go outside.  When I woke up the temperature was 6 below.  All day long we had wind chills of -20 and colder, so we stayed inside and made our own snowflakes instead.  Then we hung them in the dining room window.

I originally wanted to make these from coffee filters, but I didn't have the right kind of filters.  (Andy and I don't drink coffee.  We're weird, I know.  I do like a good decaf caramel latte, though.)  I was pleased with the way our tissue paper snowflakes turned out, though.  I had to help the kids with the folding at times, but it was a very simple craft and made a nice start to our "Friday Fun Day". 

Here are a few up close shots...

One of Katydid's...

And Gareth's...

And mine!  I liked the lavender paper.

This week we also read Snowflake Bentleyand looked at Bentley's snowflake pictures -- which the kids thought was incredibly cool.  Hopefully it will warm up a little this week so we can catch a few of our snowflakes!

Winter Studies (Let's try this again)

Today was the kind of day on which a person might have typed in a title for a post she hoped to write, and then accidentally published it instead of savbing it as a draft.  So, apologies for that.  But here is the real post (and I promise there is actually something to read this time!)

Since we started our school year back in September, I have been saving January for a study of snow.  I figured that we would of course have enormous drifts of the stuff by now.  I thought it would be the perfect thing to spend January studying something we were to have in abundance.

Only... we don't.  There are a few scant -- I hesitate to call them "patches" because they're more like, I don't know, smudges? -- of snow still nestled in the shade of the woodpile, but even those are not long for this world.  Temperatures are supposed to hit 50 in the next few days.  Not really very Januaryish.

But, we persevere in hope and have expanded our winter studies to include the Arctic regions and winter animals.  We'll be focusing on animals, because there aren't any birds to speak of... except for the crows, which deserve a study in their own right.

The timeframe for this study may simply be January, or it may spill over into February.  Here's our booklist:

Arctic Regions:

Julie of the Wolves

Autumn Moon ("Moon of the Gray Wolves")

Bears of Alaska

One Small Square: Arctic Tundra

Draw Write Now Polar Regions

(I also notice that Janice Van Cleave has a book entitled Science Around the World:Activities on Biomes from Pole to Polewhich might be interesting.)

General Winter (elementary level, and including books about snow):

Winter Moon

Blizzard!

Snowflake Bentley

Snowflakes in Photographs

Heavenly Snowflakes Stained Glass Coloring Book

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

And for the little ones:

The Big Snow

Snow is Falling

Katy and the Big Snow

White Snow Bright Snow

In the Snow: Who's Been Here?

The Snowy Day

Now all we need is some of the real thing!