Winter in Cold Places A winter unit study Ages 4–7
Wool and Warmth
$5.99 · One-time purchase
We find out that a coat makes no heat, wrap one jar in a sweater and leave one bare, finger-knit a cord of yarn, and bake a shepherd’s pie.
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.
- Charlie Needs a Cloak — Tomie dePaola
- Pelle’s New Suit — Elsa Beskow
- The Mitten — Jan Brett
- Extra Yarn — Mac Barnett
The books aren’t included. Most libraries have them.
Page six
The science lesson
A coat doesn’t make heat. It holds in the heat your body makes.
Heat always moves from something warmer to something colder. Your body makes heat from the food you eat, and a coat slows that heat on its way out.
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.
“Does your coat make heat?”
And the rest of the week
- The poems
- One short poem to learn by heart (Traditional nursery rhyme) and one to enjoy hearing (William Blake).
- The activity
- Two jars, one sweater. Same jars, same water, same room.
- The craft
- Finger knitting. Knitting is just loops pulled through loops.
- Math
- Two pages: “How much heat was lost?” and “Sorting the basket.”
- The copywork page
- Three sizes to choose from, from the single word “wool” up to “Have you any wool?” 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. Proverbs 31:13 · Isaiah 40:11 · John 10:11 · Matthew 25:36 · Psalm 23:1. The verse to learn this week is Psalm 23:1.
- Shepherd’s pie
- A warm supper with a fluffy mashed-potato top, like a sheep’s fleece. It takes about an hour, and kids can help with most of it.
- 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: two matching jars with lids, a wool sweater or scarf, hot tap water, a ball of yarn, magnifying glass or phone, a laundry basket, and shepherd’s pie ingredients.
Take the Wool and Warmth 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
Wool and Warmth is one of six units for snowy, cold winters. The set adds Snow, Tracks, Bare Trees, 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.