Snowtober - How crazy is this?

We got just a mushy coating and I am glad we are "somewhat" along the coast! 

We will have to shove this slush off the drive though or we are going to bust out the ice skates!

What do you do when...

a hurricane / tropical storm hits on a birthday and you loose electricity for 9 hours?

Play monopoly for 4.5 hours!!! 

Then have the cake after dark so that it glows brighter! 

Longest power outage we have ever had to deal with, but we made the best of it! We finally broke down and hooked the generator up after 7 hours because we were worried about the fridge and we let the kids plug in the t.v. and dvd player so they could watch Eclipse! I don't think this is a birthday that he will forget.

SERIOUSLY!!!

Strange Weather

In my 31 years I have never seen a day like today! Mind you I live in New England where the weather motto is "Don't like the weather? Wait a minute and it will change"....this was nothing like I have ever seen before!

It was gorgeous and in the 70s, the kids were all outside in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops. It was the perfect spring day, until we heard some rumbling in the distance. I called the kids in because you never know when lightening will strike...and we had just watched a video last week about how dangerous spontaneous lightening can be....they were not very happy with me, but once the thundering got closer and the lights started flickering they were more than happy to hide under the table with cookies and blankets covering them. They were even happier when they heard this incredible binging sounds coming from the back deck and looked out to see -

HAIL, HAIL and MORE HAIL!!! I have never seen hail like this here! Just another wacky day in New England!

Weather, Weather, Everywhere!

KM has inherited an obsession with weather from her father which for a while she has just been fiddling with her and there, but she asked me if I could come up with something for her to go a bit deeper and here are some of the resources that I have come up with -

• NLP Understanding Weather and Weather Patterns
• A Field Guide to the Atmosphere
• A Golden Guide - Weather
• 1001 Questions Answered About the Weather
• The Handy Weather Answer Book
• Exploring the Sky By Day
• USA Today - The Weather Book
• Investigations in Science - Weather
• Scholastic Atlas of Weather
• JASON Mission Center
• Weather Channel Kids
• FEMA for Kids
• Massachusetts Teacher Domain - Weather Lesson Plans
• BrainPOP - OF COURSE
• Educator's Reference Desk - Meterology

If you have any additional resources to share PLEASE DO!!!

Weather Center

While I was digging around looking for things to create a weather unit for KM, I came across this freebie at Currclick - Whatever the Weather. It was young for KM but I figured that I would save it to use for clip art or if she wanted to make a weather game or something. Then when I was trying to come up with things to put in the "toddler area" of our class space, I thought it would be perfect to use to create a weather today center.

I made up the background sign myself and then printed it on to cardstock. I used the brown tape to make the square and rectangle so that it would be very easy to see which fit on which spot. I took the word strips and pasted some of the smaller pics to those so that SC could match them up with the larger picture. Then I used magnets that I had left over from something - ?calendar, notepad that was suppose to attach to a fridge? - you don't need to much and if they are too strong little hands will try to rip them and get frustrated. I attached them to the piece on the wall and to the strips and squares. I am thinking I may cover the pieces with clear contact paper or packing tape to reinforce them a bit though as the edges are already getting a bit worn.



We don't do the center everyday because SC is not here everyday and is only 2. If she were older - or when she gets a bit older - we might print out a calendar and record the weather for every day. This could also lead to graphing, prediction, pattern discussions and all sorts of other things. This could also be a great way to incorporate younger siblings and make them feel included in the days work.

Quick easy addition to a morning routine that can expand to lots of different curriculum connections!

Thanks Wendy for asking - I got to it a bit quicker than I thought I would!

Science Thursday - A Little of this and a Little of That

These pics are from last week -

Our triops

were lots of fun to watch while they lasted...

and very interesting to examine under the microscope
we also managed to harvest some eggs and

will be trying to hatch these once they have dried out.



This week we had some fun with SC

First they added a little

Then they added A LOT...




I LOVE her expression in that last one!



Our unit this week was on Weather so here are some of our favorite pics from those projects...

It was out like a lamb!

Here is the results from our weather watch -

The old saying seems to have held true here in New England!!!

In Like a Lion...

Let's hope for the Lamb!!!

March came roaring in with a wintry storm that called off our coop classes for the day! So I thought we would start wishing for spring around here...

We started by making a calendar to track how many wintry days and how many springlike days we have this month.

Then we decided to make some flowery wreaths and garland strands to hang all over the house using some recycled tissue paper - HERE is a great link for tissue paper flowers of all kinds!

Here is a rather interesting elementary level art project lesson plan.

Here is a cute little play from Scholastic.


On another note there is only about 18 hours left to register for World Math on March 4th -Be sure to Go here to register and challenge people from all around the world!