FIAR: Stopping By The Woods on A Snowy Evening

I am so attached to Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost after rowing through the edition by Susan Jeffries. I think it is one of my most favorite poems now. I can't hear my daughter recite it enough. Rowing through this book and Katy & The Big Snow brought us so much delight during a time of winter that is typically pretty dreary.

WE READ:
- Winter Trees by Carole Gerber
- Best Foot Forward: Exploring Feet, Flippers and Claws by Ingo Arndt
- Big Tracks, Little Tracks: Following Animal Prints by Millicent E. Selsam
- Crinkleroot’s Guide to Animal Tracking by Jim Arnosky
- Wild Tracks by Jim Arnosky
- Crinkleroot's Guide to Giving Back to Nature by Jim Arnosky
- Crinkleroot's Nature Almanac by Jim Arnosky
(and a few other Arnosky books that didn't have anything to do with winter but were lovely!)
- Winter Lullaby by Barbara Seuling
- Snow by Uri Shulevitz
- The Mitten & The Hat by Jan Brett
- The Log Cabin Quilt by Ellen Howard
- Emily by Barbara Cooney
- Antler, Bear, Canoe: A Northwoods Alphabet by Betsy Bowen
- Marven of the Great North Woods by Kathryn Lasky
- The Winter Gift by Zagwyn
{poetry books}
- A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children by Caroline Kennedy
- A Swinger of Birches
- Sing a Song of Popcorn (book of poems for young people)
- The Llama Who Had No Pajama: 100 Favorite Poems
- Animal Tracks: Wild Poems to Read Aloud by Charles Ghinga
- Crazy Like a Fox: A Simile Story by Loreen Leedy

WE LEARNED ABOUT ROBERT FROST:

Who he was - where he lived - what his family was like... We learned all these things. Here's a great web site with information: http://www.frostplace.org/ 

We enjoyed watching these videos:

• Robert Frost reading "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening:

• Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" read by Susan Sarandon: •

Find a great lapbook for Stopping By The Woods on A Snowy Evening over at Homeschoolshare.com. Activities in the lapbook include: Jingle Bells copywork, Stopping by the Woods copywork, Rhyme Scheme & Poetry handout, Animals in the Story, New Vocabulary Words, Poems I Read list, and New England Winter Weather Facts.

We talked about Tree Skeletons, using Winter Trees as a jumping off point.

We did a bunch of activities regarding animal tracks. See blog post that focuses on that here.

We also did tons of weather-related experiments. See post here.

What's a unit on poetry without a little art too? The Girl was inspired by looking at images of birch trees in the moonlight, as well as a cat on a swing. Can you see it?

We built snowmen out of paper.
- Snowman Mobile
- Free Olaf printable: http://www.thepurplepumpkinblog.co.uk/2014/12/free-olaf-printable.html
- We also found an Olaf states of matter mini book, which was a great thing to use when we melted and then refroze snow (see post on Katy and the Big Snow). I plan to take it back out during our study of states of matter when we row through Mike Mulligan.

POETRY FOCUS
We really focused on poetry, reading lots of Robert Frost as well as other poets. I can't say enough great things about three books:
- A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children by Caroline Kennedy
- A Swinger of Birches
- Sing a Song of Popcorn (book of poems for young people)

I love poetry, and I insist on good poetry. These three books have that.

We wrote our own WINTER acrostic poem. Find link here: http://www.education.com/worksheet/article/seasonal-acrostic-winter/

But possibly the most important thing we did was memorize Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening.