Winter in Warm Places A winter unit study Ages 4–7
The Rains
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We set a rain gauge on a post, measure every rainfall, follow the water off the roof to see where it goes, and put on our boots to go out in it.
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.
- Rain — Manya Stojic
- A Drop Around the World — Barbara Shaw McKinney
- Rain! — Linda Ashman · Christian Robinson
- Come On, Rain! — Karen Hesse
The books aren’t included. Most libraries have them.
Page six
The science lesson
Rain doesn’t go anywhere new. The water in your gauge has been around the world many times.
The sun warms water in the sea, lakes, and puddles, and some of it turns into water vapor, an invisible gas that rises. High up, the air is cooler, so the vapor turns back into tiny drops that make a cloud.
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.
“Where was the water in our gauge a month ago?”
And the rest of the week
- The poems
- One short poem to learn by heart (Robert Louis Stevenson) and one to enjoy hearing (Emily Dickinson).
- The activity
- Follow the water downhill. Water always runs downhill.
- The craft
- Make a bottle rain gauge. Many rainy days bring less than an inch, so the small marks between the inches are handy.
- Math
- Two pages: “Reading the gauge” and “Buckets and barrels.”
- The copywork page
- Three sizes to choose from, from the single word “rain” up to “It falls on field and tree.” 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 5:10 · Psalm 147:8 · Ecclesiastes 1:7 · Matthew 5:45 · Isaiah 55:10. The verse to learn this week is Isaiah 55:10.
- Dumplings on a stew
- Put the stew on before you go out in the rain. The dumplings steam under the lid while everyone changes out of their boots.
- 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: coats and rain boots, a large, straight-sided plastic bottle, tape and a ruler, a few stones, a glass jar, a small plate, and ice, a bucket, paper and crayons, and stew and dumpling ingredients.
Take the Rains 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 Rains is one of six units for mild, wet winters. The set adds Frost and Dew, 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.