Seasons: Winter

Winter

This project is part of a provincial collaboration under the coordination of teacher, Sandra Gluth, from Edmonton Public Schools. Both Miss Borrelli and Mrs. Vaage were part of this project.

Miss Borrelli's Class

We began investigating Winter by listening to a variety of winter stories and brainstorming winter vocabulary and/or things they know about winter.  The children came up with several pages of winter vocabulary which we have posted in our classroom for easy reference during various writing activities.

We then shared the story "Rosie's Walk" by Pat Hutchins. The children listened to the story and we discussed ways to turn this simple, patterned story into a winter story. The children decided that the "main character" in the story should be a snowman and that this snowman would go for a walk outside. Before we started writing the story, we brainstormed "positional words" (on, off, over, beside, around, over, etc.) that could be used. The children then thought of places a snowman might go and they came up with things such as our school, a forest, an ice fishing pond, a skating rink, etc.

 In order to organize our thoughts and ideas, we created a story map that not only showed all of the places that the snowman went but also showed the circular journey that the snowman embarked on. The children decided that the snowman would begin by coming out of his igloo and then venturing to all of the places that had been brainstormed earlier. They also decided what the snowman would do when he arrived to the different places (here the children talked about going around skating rinks, over hills, etc.).

After creating the class Story Map, we told the story orally by following the story map and then each of the children wrote and illustrated an individual page for the class book. The children used cut funfoam (art foam) to create the illustrations. We have our story on display and will coil the pages into a class book very soon!

The children were very excited about this writing project, so much so that we decided to create a storyboard and "animate" the story using clay snowmen. Each of the children assisted with the preparation of the characters and their own portion of the set using a variety of recycled materials and craft materials. They were then ready to "animate" the story!
 

Mrs. Vaage's Class

Snow Fun

We read so many stories about snow. It was so exciting to see the snow - fluffy and white, surrounding everything. We had made rain in our classroom earlier, so we knew about water vapor and cold air making snow. But the fun of playing in it was the best. Below you will see some of our writing about The Snow Day, our favorite book. Also you will see some writing about the snow fort we created, and our ice castle photos. We also created our own 6-sided snowflakes that are illustrated below.

We loved the fluffy winter days, and did not like the "cheek-pinching-cold-days" when it got to 50° Below Zero!!! (well, almost!)

Solo, the Wolf Pup, Goes for a Walk

Our version of the story "Rosie's Walk" is done with a wolf pup. We had been reading a chapter book "Lonely Wolf Pup" by Susan Hughes because we had been very interested in wolves. When we discussed the project of changing the "Rosie's Walk" story to a new version, the children unanimously decided to use "Solo" the wolf pup from the story.

In order to stimulate their thinking in using prepositions and verbs, I read two books to them: "A Walk with a Wolf" by Janni Howker and "The Eyes of Gray Wolf" by Jonathan Landon. Both books were so rich in descriptive words, that I decided to change our project of creating words to remembering and rehearsing already beautiful words. As we came to a new phrase that was perfect for our project, one child volunteered to remember it. We added a second phrase and another child memorized it, and so on. In order to help the memory process, we went back after the addition of each phrase to check if children still remembered their phrases. They were so excellent at repeating and rehearsing and supporting each other through this mental challenge. When each child had a phrase, he/she illustrated it below to make our book.
Solo, the wolf pup goes for a walk...
he sniffs the crisp night air
he stands alone and stares
he climbs along a ridge
he trots through the blue pebbles
he rises through the hills
he lopes through the snow
he snaps at a feather
he tucks his nose under his bushy tail
he wags his tail
he plunges through the slush ice
he slides between boulders
he shakes like a dog
he drifts through the woods
he curls up
he moves between the spruce tree and the birch
he leaps over a frozen creek
he laps the chill water
he closes his eyes, throws back his head and howls
floats over the snow
he flushes a snowshoe hare
And Solo, the wolf pup, goes to sleep!

Building Our Ice Castle

Our class started the ice castle with laying the foundation blocks, and we helped finish off the very last rows of blocks. As you can tell by our smiles and rosy faces, we were happy to be outside, playing and working in the snow. Our mittens were frozen from being wet from making the slush mortar. We also appreciated how Allushua in "A Promise is a Promise" might have felt after being pulled under the sea ice by the Quallipilluit. We read this story after we made our ice castle and the children had a new understanding of how absolutely cold she must have been, when her father found her. We also had far more sympathy with the scientists and educators who are living outside in the Yukon and Nunavut for more than three months. We were happy the day was over and we could go to our warm homes and a good, hot supper!

Snowflakes

Our snowflakes were created using pipe cleaners and beads. A drop of glue on the ends kept the beads firmly in place. After we completed our snowflakes, we drew them to represent the pattern as an extension of Math Patterns.