Are All Snowflakes The Same?

Today was all about exploring snowflakes: how they form, how many sides they have, and the temperatures at which they can be made. We didn’t have much snow to work with outside, but that didn’t stop us from having a lot of fun learning about snowflakes!

Our outside game this morning was Frost and Sun, a tag game that went nicely with our theme. For greeting, we did another “where’s my twin” greeting where homeschoolers had to find their match. Everyone had a kind of snowflake, like spatial dendrite, hexagonal plate, and stellar crystal. One we found our partners we sat down and greeted each other.

Homeschoolers soon discovered that we had another mystery password. Not only that but there was another mystery: What is wrong with the snowflakes on the windows? We solved these problems with clues gathered throughout the day. 

 Homeschoolers had very impressive home projects to share today! Keep up the good work!

To find out how a snowflake is formed, we began by reaching in our pockets.  Most of us found pieces of dust and lint, which is the first building block of a snowflake! Then I read a “snow fantasy” where homeschoolers imagined they were specks of dust blowing into a cloud and becoming a snowflake. We learned that most snowflakes have six sides because that’s how water molecules form into crystals. 

Then I read The Snow Show by Carolyn Fisher, a funny story about a cooking-style TV show where the audience the recipe for a snowflake.

For our morning activity we all got a chance to build our own snowflakes using marshmallows and toothpicks. After homeschoolers built their own, I gave them the challenge of building a capped column. Kids got very creative in solving this problem!

Then we had snack and headed out for our outdoor adventure. We began with a snow scavenger hunt, but we soon abandoned that for some fun fallen trees and were soon climbing all over the place. Just about everyone got a chance to climb a tree!

We saw skunk cabbage beginning to poke up from the leaves! We stepped on some and they were sure stinky!

 

Journal time was busy today. We used a secret code and felt what was in the mystery bag to figure out the password: hexagon.

Then we took the temperature outside and made our own snow thermometers based on the Snowflake Bentley poster. 

Last, we used a flannel board story to illustrate the creation of a snowflake inside a cloud. See you Monday! Please send in a pair of indoor shoes in addition to outdoor shoes for our morning greeting. 

 

Where Do Insects Go In Winter?

Our mystery of the day today in homeschool was where do insects go in winter? We started the day with a game of blob tag. Homeschoolers didn’t seem to feel chilly chasing each other around in the yard, even though it was cold cold cold!

We went inside and started morning circle with a life cycle greeting. Some kids had to sort out a butterfly’s life cycle, and some kids had to sort out a grasshopper life cycle. After they put them in order, they greeted each other. During the greeting we discussed complete vs. incomplete metamorphosis. Insects have different stage of their lives, and there are insects that spend the winter in each of these different stages (egg - larva - chrysalis - adult or egg – nymph – nymph – adult).

We sang the metamorphosis song next. It was a little tricky but fun. Then kids shared home projects about evergreens. It was great to see kids taking their tree identification skills home with them! Then Owen shared a moose track cast he and his family made with plaster – it was huge, and he found the track right in his own yard!

Morning activity involved finding out where and how insects spend the winter. I started off by showing everyone a woolly bear – the larval form of the Isabella moth – that I found right here in the Hitchcock Center library. Then we used a mural of a farm to find out where insects go in winter. Saying little rhymes, kids placed their insect on the mural where it went, and in what form. For example, the firefly spends the winter as a larva under the dirt!

Then it was time for snack. After snack, I showed kids a spotted salamander that someone brought us. We were able to successfully feed it a mealworm, and so we are going to be able to keep it through the winter! 

We went on our outdoor adventure, running through the woods until we came to Bramble Hill Farm. At first I didn’t think we were going to see any evidence of insects but then we found FIVE praying mantis egg cases! It was interesting that they were right in the same spot as the one we were keeping track of in the fall. We decided that they must have been better hidden in the fall, and now more plants have died and fallen away, exposing the rest. We hope to see many praying mantises in the spring!

 

Kids had a wonderful time playing with cattails. Some dueled and others made a soft “blanket” out of the fluffy seeds. Other people interacted with the farm animals, who love children.

When we got back to the Hitchcock Center some kids spotted a short tailed shrew! John caught it and we had a look. Not something you see everyday! 

We had lunch, then got to work on our journals. After that, we played “Shelter Shuffle” – a version of musical chairs where children were insects trying to find shelter in the winter. Each chair had a hidden label saying a sheltered place, such as “under ground” or “in tree bark”. When the music stopped, they had to find a chair. Whoever didn’t have a chair got “frozen out” by the cold. Additionally, there was one hidden label with a woodpecker. If you sat at the woodpecker chair, you got eaten! Kids had so much fun we played twice.