Over and Under the Snow

Today we read the book Over and Under The Snow by Kate Messner to help us learn to create a plan for our winter landscape mural.  This multi-disciplinary project is helping the children learn about the parts of a landscape picture and spatial concepts like the:
-horizon
-foreground
-background
-perimeter
-area
along with their seasonal changes unit in science.

After reading our book we added new animals to our How Animals Adapt to Winter Chart, learning charts are great ways to sort and organize information.  Children then chose animals that they want to draw and paint to add to our mural next week.  When we chose our animals we thought about "landscape accessories", like logs, stumps, trees, water bodies, caves, lodges, aquatic plants, ground cover that our mural will also need. 

Today's book taught us how many animals live under the snow for protection from predators and for warmth.  We talked about how snow has many air pockets in it between the branches of the flakes which traps the heat. 

To prove that snow has air spaces we filled a cup with snow at recess and are noticing that as it melts it takes up less space, since the melted droplets to not have spaces between them. 

We can't wait to finish our collaborative art mural next week!!!  Ask your child about the animal they plan on adding to our mural.  You can even look at pictures of their animal on the computer.  Ask them: What their animal will be doing?  Hibernating?  Hunting? Huddling to stay warm?  How will they show that?