January School Time: Snowflake Month

Okay, okay I know you've all been waiting with bated breath to hear what we've been doing for school time this month. Seriously, stop baiting your breath like that... it's not good for you.

We're focusing on snowflakes this month, along with snow animals (penguins and polar bears to be exact) So without further adieu, here's a little preview of Snowflake Month to appease you breath-baters before you turn purple and keel over...

• We went to the library and checked out oodles of snow and winter-inspired books. A few cute ones we've enjoyed reading are:

Tippy Tippy Tippy Hide

The Missing Mitten Mystery
One Winter's Night

• Bennett's favorite activity so far this month has been a simple little "science experiment" we did. Since we're learning about snowflakes, we decided to get an ice cube and let it melt in the sun and see how long it took to melt. Bennett LOVED this and kept checking the ice cube every few minutes to see if it had melted yet.

• We've been cutting out paper snowflakes from blue construction paper. This is a good way to teach Bennett how to use scissors, and he loves unfolding the paper at the end to reveal our snowflakes.
  
  
• I found this great website with lots of winter activities and coloring sheets. I am planning on doing a few of these simple crafts from the website:
  

Thumbprint Penguins

Easy Cut-and-Paste Penguins

Do you like how the "E" in Easy isn't highlighted? Let's just say that blogger is really annoying me today and leave it at that, shall we?

I also think this polar bear craft page would be great practice cutting circles and this mitten craft is cute if we have time.

I also found this cute idea on familyfun.com. Even though it's an idea for Valentines Day, I though it would be fun to make these bags of teddy grahams and gummy bears when we learn about polar bears. Then we will attach a note that says "Bear Hugs From Bennett" and Bennett can give them to his friends. I was also thinking of using gummy bears/teddy grahams to practice counting and adding/subtracting. Bennett loves it because it is tactile, and then he gets to eat the snack when we're done!

Bennett loves to cook, so I am planning on making these cupcakes or these cupcakes when we learn about polar bears. I also have a cute penguin cookie cutter (random, I know...) we will use to make sugar cookies when we learn about penguins.

And of course no snowflake month would be complete without a trip to the snow. We plan on taking the kids in a few weeks, so stay tuned!