Janice Van Cleave Science Books

After checking several of the Janice Van Cleave science experiment books out of the library, I was happy to find a couple in a clearance bin. These are great to have as part of your home library. Many of the experiments use items that you already have around the house. Earlier in the week, we did an experiment that used ice, sand and salt. A17 loves science so we'll be doing more of these.

Katy and the Big Snow

Last week A17 and I started our study of Katy and the Big Snow. This is one of the titles in the Five in a Row curriculum. We have been using FIAR loosely since last spring ( more on FIAR in another post!). The book has been a favorite of A17. I chose several lessons from the teacher's manual and adapted them a bit to fit. A17 colored a picture of Katy and used that to make the basis of his lapbook.

One of the lessons involved reading maps. We changed this a bit. A17 colored pictures of town buildings from the story and we glued them on poster board. I found these by googling Katy and the Snow printables. We worked on the words "above" and "below" instead of more typical directions. For example, the library is below the railroad tracks.

Another lesson had to do with identifying street signs. We read a wonderful DK book called Signs in Our World. Then we made a tab book about signs. We left a spot in the lapbook blank to add a photo of his poster map.

We first started with FIAR because of all the science lessons. This time it was about weather patterns and snow. We did several simple experiments. One involved putting salt or sand on ice cubes then seeing which one melted the fastest. If forgot to take a before picture, so in this one the ice cube is all but melted.

Snow crafts

With all the snow falling A17 and I figured it was time for some snow crafts. The first idea I found online. You make this snowflake print by cutting a bell pepper in half. Dip each half in white paint or use a paintbrush to paint it on. Be sure to cover the parts in the middle too. Press the pepper down on a sheet of blue paper--press hard on the middle. It didn't turn out as well as we had hoped, though A17 thought the pepper was cool! We had to add a little more paint to the center to make it more snowflake-ish.

The second snowlflake was made by putting glue in the center of the paper and using qtips to make a snowflake pattern. Two very quick and easy snowflake crafts!