Winter in Warm Places A winter unit study Ages 4–7
Frost and Dew
$5.99 · One-time purchase
You can have ice without any snow. This week we get up early, find out where the water on the grass came from when it didn’t rain, and watch it all disappear by mid-morning.
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.
- Water Is Water — Miranda Paul, illustrated by Jason Chin
- Down Comes the Rain — Franklyn M. Branley
- The Very Busy Spider — Eric Carle
- Jack Frost — Kazuno Kohara
The books aren’t included. Most libraries have them.
Page six
The science lesson
The grass is soaking wet, and it didn’t rain. Where did the water come from?
There is always water in the air, as an invisible gas called water vapor. Warm air can hold more of it than cold air.
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.
“Why is the grass wet when the path right next to it is dry?”
And the rest of the week
- The poems
- One short poem to learn by heart (Traditional singing game) and one to enjoy hearing (Traditional English rhyme).
- The activity
- The dew walk. Going in the same order each day makes it a fair test, so your child can compare one morning with the next.
- The craft
- Frost on the kitchen table. Salt makes the ice colder than plain ice can get.
- Math
- Two pages: “Counting the wet places” and “How long until it was gone?.”
- The copywork page
- Three sizes to choose from, from the single word “dew” up to “On a cold and frosty morning.” 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 38:28 · Deuteronomy 32:2 · Hosea 14:5 · Job 38:29 · Lamentations 3:23. The verse to learn this week is Lamentations 3:22–23.
- Cold-morning oatmeal
- Start it before you go out. It’s ready when the wet boots come back in. Makes two or three small bowls.
- 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: boots and coats, a magnifying glass or phone camera, a glass, ice, and water, clean empty can, ice, and salt, food coloring, if you have it, and oatmeal ingredients.
Take the Frost and Dew 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
Frost and Dew is one of six units for mild, wet winters. The set adds The Rains, The Birds That Came South, The Cold Snap, 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.