Snowflakes

January 2010

For a few weeks, we spent some of our days learning about snowflakes and completing our first lapbook.  I learned about lapbooking at the MHA conference last fall.  We started another right after that but it never made it to completion.  I have to admit, lapbooking might be MY thing rather than the kids.  I really wanted to finish it so I ended up doing much of the work at the end or assigning it out so the kids learned a little more.  It wasn't what I was going for but I learned a lot.  About snowflakes and my kids!

I didn't want to complete just a lapbook, but rather do art projects, science projects, etc around snow and ice.  We did learn a lot but the kids let Eric know that possibly they were tired of snowflakes.  Me, I just wanted to complete the project!  The driver in me sometimes gets in the way.  But, at least I try to make it fun (for who I'm not sure).

FYI - Much of our information and ideas came from this site.

We began our week watching the movie Snowflake Bentley which was a reading of the book.  Wilson Bentley spent his whole life studying and photographing snowflakes so everyone could share it with others.


"Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated., When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind."

Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley 1925

EXPERIMENTS

We all really liked this easy real crystal snowflake project using borax and water.  We used a lot of borax so the overnight results were more like an hour for us which of course the kids loved.  I would highly recommend giving it a try.

This ice spike  project was very easy and neat but not as exciting as the first.  I would still recommend it since it is really easy and the spikes are quite beautiful.  I'm sure the kids don't understand the science of it now, but they have tucked the experience away for future reference.

One of the templates I found for our lapbook had this experiment.  We filled a jar with snow and measured it and all guessed how how much water it would create when it melted.  We were all too high.  5 inches (packed down a little) melted to a mere 2 inches.

LAPBOOK

Here is our lapbook.  We just cut out photos of real snowflakes for the front.

We included a snowflake from Wil, information on how no two snowflakes are alike and some other little cutouts that we found online.  Sometimes we write the information into our own works and other times we just cut it out because it makes it easier on ourselves!

I asked the kids to draw a picture of what they like best about snow.  Samantha is the only one who wanted to so here it is.  She has enjoyed cross country skiing and loves snowflakes themselves.  This winter, we have spent much time cutting out paper snowflakes.  We did some searching on how to fold the paper for the best results .  It really is worth learning.  I included the instructions in our lapbook.

We included some additional art, some fun facts about snow fall in MN (latest snow in MN was June 4, Most snow in one storm 46 inches in 1994), and a chart with the types of snowflakes.  The chart has been really fun as I have seen the kids change the way they draw their snowflakes to incorporate some of what they have seen here.

Snowflake Math.  Since snowflakes are almost all six sided (some are three according to some info we found), we worked on our multiplication table for sixes and did a fun math puzzle we found during searching for lapbook items.  Sam loved this coded math puzzle.  I am excited to create more for her.  She didn't even know she was doing math - YEAH!

We also a 3 & 6 multiples chart to see the pattern it created.

VIRTUAL SNOWFLAKES

We also each spent a little time cutting virtual snowflakes which proved to be fun.  It isn't exactly like paper since with all the cuts that Wil did, his snowflake would have fell into a pile of a hundred pieces, but it is fun nonetheless.  Adult warning - it is a bit addicting.  I found myself really intrigued with how each cut would turn out.  Another way to waste some time on the computer!

What I have learned it to simplify this process.  Have everything ready and don't drag it out into a second week.  AND possibly let go if the kids aren't as excited as you.  I will, however, cherish this finished project and I sense that we will look back on it and relearn some things over the years.