Winter in Cold Places A winter unit study Ages 4–7
Tracks
$5.99 · One-time purchase
We smooth a patch of snow before bed and find out in the morning who walked across it. We learn to tell a hopper from a walker and press our own tracks into clay.
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.
- In the Snow: Who’s Been Here? — Lindsay Barrett George
- Big Tracks, Little Tracks — Millicent E. Selsam
- Tracks in the Snow — Wong Herbert Yee
- Wild Tracks! — Jim Arnosky
The books aren’t included. Most libraries have them.
Page six
The science lesson
The pattern of a trail tells you more than one print does.
Some animals walk. A cat, fox, or deer puts one foot after another and leaves a line of single prints.
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.
“Which way was it going?”
And the rest of the week
- The poems
- One short poem to learn by heart (Mother Goose) and one to enjoy hearing (Robert Louis Stevenson).
- The activity
- The track patch. A smooth patch is like a blank page, and the night writes on it.
- The craft
- Salt-dough track tiles. Pressing a track and looking at it up close helps kids remember which print belongs to which animal.
- Math
- Two pages: “Counting who came” and “Four feet at a time.”
- The copywork page
- Three sizes to choose from, from the single word “tracks” up to “Wiggle waggle went his tail.” 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. Psalm 104:20 · Job 12:7 · Psalm 25:4 · Proverbs 3:6 · Psalm 119:105. The verse to learn this week is Psalm 119:105.
- Thumbprint tracks
- Small butter cookies with a track pressed into each one. Pressing the prints is a job a young child can do all by themselves.
- 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 flat board, birdseed, oats, or crumbs, ruler and magnifying glass or phone, flour, salt, water, a glass and a fork, small toy animals, cookie ingredients, and boots and mittens.
Take the Tracks 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 Cold Places
$24 · $35.94 bought separately
Tracks is one of six units for snowy, cold winters. The set adds Snow, Bare Trees, Wool and Warmth, The Light Returning, and Sap and Sugaring, 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.