Winter in Warm Places A winter unit study Ages 4–7
The Cold Snap
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Once or twice a winter the cold comes through and everything changes for a few days. We cover the garden before dark, set out jars of water to see which ones freeze, and find out why a clear, still night is the coldest.
Page four
The four books
Read them aloud in any order, and read a favorite twice. If your library doesn’t have one of these, another good book on the same subject works just as well.
- Snow Is Falling — Franklyn M. Branley
- Weather Words and What They Mean — Gail Gibbons
- Frederick — Leo Lionni
- The Tiny Seed — Eric Carle
The books aren’t included. Most libraries have them.
Page six
The science lesson
Thirty-two degrees is the line. Above it, water stays water. Below it, water turns to ice. This week the temperature crosses that line and back again.
A cold snap starts when a big mass of cold air moves south over your home. Plants are mostly water, and when the water inside a leaf freezes, it swells and can burst the leaf’s cells.
It starts with what the grown-up needs to know, in plain words. Then there’s something to try together at the table, and one question to ask afterward.
“An old sheet isn’t warm. So how does it help the plant?”
And the rest of the week
- The poems
- One short poem to learn by heart (Christina Rossetti) and one to enjoy hearing (John Greenleaf Whittier).
- The activity
- Five jars of water. The jar in the open usually freezes most, because nothing stands between it and the clear sky.
- The craft
- Ice suncatchers. It only works if the night really freezes, so it’s a fun way to test the forecast.
- Math
- Two pages: “Above the line, below the line” and “Counting the covers.”
- The copywork page
- Three sizes to choose from, from the single word “cold” up to “Who has seen the wind?” Practice makes progress.
- Outside
- A page for spending some time outside observing nature, one look a day, with room for a word, a number, or a tiny drawing.
- A devotion, five days
- A verse, a sentence, and a “Thank you God for ___,” line each day. Job 37:10 · Isaiah 25:4 · Psalm 147:17 · Psalm 147:18 · Psalm 91:4. The verse to learn this week is Psalm 91:4.
- The freeze-night soup
- Made with the tender greens you picked before covering the beds. Greens from the store work just as well.
- Coloring pages
- Two simple, hand-drawn pages to color.
- What you will need
- Four books from the library, a printer, and things most homes already have: a thermometer or a weather app, old sheets and a few rocks, five matching jars and labels, a shallow dish and string, leaves, berries, evergreen bits, a flashlight and warm coats, and soup ingredients.
Take the Cold Snap unit.
One purchase for the whole unit as a print-ready PDF. No account and no login. Your download is ready as soon as you check out, and it’s yours to print as often as you like for the children in your own house.
Part of a set of six
Winter in Warm Places
$24 · $35.94 bought separately
The Cold Snap is one of six units for mild, wet winters. The set adds The Rains, Frost and Dew, The Birds That Came South, The Winter Harvest, and The Winter Sky, one unit for each week of winter. You get six separate PDFs.
Here it is.
All five days of Apples, yours to print. A copy is on its way to your inbox as well — check the spam folder if it isn’t there in a few minutes.
Start with Monday: cut an apple across the middle instead of down through the stem, and look for the star.