Storm in the Night {FI♥AR} and Learning About Weather

You've seen what our days look liked this week, and how I planned for this row, and now here is our finished row!  (For those who prefer to see my rows come together nicely in my Five in a Row posts, don't worry, so do I! I am glad that I was able to show you how crazy and full our days can be and that I do not do it all! But what I do do, I love. )

   

and
Learning About Weather
[Monday] Social Studies: Relationships, Emotions {Fear}, Thundercake 

Just like Thomas and his grandfather have a special relationship in Storm in the Night, so does the little girl and her grandmother in Thundercake, making this a perfect go-along book! {I didn't love Storm in the Night and after reading Thundercake, I wished I were rowing it instead - it is a neat book.} We did the lesson from the manual answering the questions for both books. Then we did the Weather Unit lesson on Thundercake. . . and made thundercake! 



My Fears Mapping 

Thundercake! 
Note: I did not follow the recipe from the book because tomatoes in a cake just didn't sound good. We made our favorite vegan chocolate cake with buttercream chocolate frosting, instead. 

[Tuesday] Language Arts: Punctuation ~ Italics and Quotation Marks {Dialogue}, Poetic Device ~ Onomatopoeia, Personification, Simile, Rainbow Weather Lesson; Art: Facial Expressions

We did the lessons from the manual on Storm in the Night, did a weather sounds project for  onomatopoeia, and then did the rainbow weather lesson with an art lesson. 

Onomatopoeia Fun With Weather Sounds



For our Rainbow Weather Lesson, we read A Rainbow of My Own, did the activities from the weather unit and did a rainbow craft.


First, we started the rainbow craft:




Then we read A Rainbow of My Own


And did the Roy G. Biv activity from the Weather Unit.  (Roy also helped me with my review of Pick and Draw, which also covered our art lesson for this row!) 



Cute little fellow with wild hair that was hard to glue down. =)

His name tag says:

HELLO
my name is: 
Roy G. Biv
I'm here to help you remember the colors of the rainbow.  
Click here to see our finished guys in my Pick and Draw review. 

Then we wrote what the colors of the rainbow remind us of:

I wrote Eliana's for her; Malachi wrote his own.

[Wednesday]  Science: Clouds, Wind, Water Cycle 

We read the lesson from the manual on clouds - we covered Stratus, Cumulus, Cirrus, and Nimbus clouds in other weather books as well. 

Then we read Little Cloud, by Eric Carle and the kids did a cloud craft while I read to them. 



We read It Looked Like Spilt Milk and painted like we did in I Am an Artist ~ Clouds {Before FI♥AR}. It was FUN to repeat this project with a new twist! 





Predicting the Weather {by watching the clouds}


This was an activity from a Scholastic science book. 

Water Cycle




We also did a Water Cycle Experiment with Jordan. His experiment was to remove the salt from "salty sea water" by evaporation and condensation and then collecting the precipitation. We had planned to do this experiment (minus the salt), so it worked out nicely. 

We read Like a Windy Day and Wind is to Feel, by Shirley Cook Hatch.  The first one is just a fun book on what it would be like if you are the wind. The second book is a really neat science book about wind that is full of hands on activities that you do while you read. I really enjoyed this lesson. I'll let the pictures tell the story:




Feeling the cool air when we blow on our wet finger. 



The air is cooled when it flows over the ice.  

Making a sound when we blow across the top. 



The air makes a funny noise when we let it out slowly. 

And a different noise when we let go. 


Whistling! 
Then we went outside to "catch" the wind! 
Later that day. . . 

Wind Experiment: Measure the Wind

Malachi's lesson on wind from his Daily Science. 



We also did the lesson on Good Wind and Bad Wind from the Weather Unit ~ Malachi wrote what he would do if he found himself playing in a good wind/bad wind. 

Good Wind, Bad Wind
We started on "My Weather Book."





Weather and Temperature

Each day this week, we tracked the weather and temperature on a chart. 



Lap Journal:
It's filling up fast!

[Thursday] No school today!

[Friday] Five in a Row Recipe: Cloud Cookies, finish up "My Weather Book."


These are the same Fluffy Cloud Cookies that we made for Malachi's preschool in 2009: R is for Rainbow

[Sunday] Art: Contrast and Memory Making

The manual had us learning about contrast, so I pulled this lesson from our Evan Moor art book, How to Teach Art to Children

Then we made Clean Mush (with all that toilet paper we unrolled on Tuesday) because it reminds me of fluffy clouds. 


I've been wanting to make this for almost a year and it was super easy and fun! 


Clean Mush

We used: 
  • 2-3 rolls of toilet paper
  • 1 bar grated soap
  • 1/3 cup borax
  • warm water to desired consistency


The kids had been outside playing and it was rather chilly, so they loved the warm, clean mush. (They had their hands and feet in it, too). Good, clean fun. =) 

Storm in the Night is a Five in a Row selection from Volume 1. 

Delightful Links:

Weekly Weather and Temperature Graph
Onomatopoeia Umbrella Inspriation
Weather Poems, Water Cycle Chart
Sun and Cloud Craft Inspiration

Q&A: (from my comments here!)

I loved this question that I got in an email and I am so thankful for the mama that asked it. =)

Q: With all that a day entails, how do you make time to "enjoy" your kids? I feel like it is a rat-race and we are just moving from one thing to the next.

A:  I take pictures and lots of them. . . their writing, their hands, their profile, their expressions and I REVEL in the moment! Time stands still in my camera. And then we move on to the next thing. But for that moment, time stood still. And then when they are in bed at night, I upload the photos, edit them and blog about them. . . and read my blog. This is also why I take tons of pictures! =)

2 comments

  1. I have to ask... how was the Thunder Cake? We read that book while we were rowing "Another Celebrated Dancing Bear" because of the Russian theme, and I'd wanted to make it but we were all a little weirded out to see tomatoes in the list of ingredients... ? I think we'll read it again with Storm in the Night because it fits so perfectly, and maybe this time we'll be brave and try out the recipe. Thanks for all the insight, your posts have been my homeschooling inspiration for years now!

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  2. Hi Rachel! I had forgotten that the original recipe was made with tomatoes until a friend posted a pic of their thundercake and said it wasn't very good! I was weirded out by the tomatoes too, haha! We just made a Vegan chocolate cake recipe that I loved and chocolate buttercream frosting, and it was very good!

    I remember liking Thundercake more than Storm in the Night, so I'm happy you will be reading it along with! If you do brave the original Thundercake recipe, please let me know if it comes out good! :)

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