Sunday, February 28, 2021

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!






 During our mid-winter break, we got slammed with snow. I was delighted that my students got to enjoy the snow without us having to make up snow days in June :)

I decided we could celebrate snow in class by reading these 3 lovely books.

Owl Moon by Jane Yolen is the story of a young child who finally gets his turn to go owling with his father. He shares the owling wisdom of his father and older brothers with the reader and works hard to follow their advice, despite his enthusiasm. Illustrator John Schoenherr did a wonderful job of depicting the child's excitement on each page.

Over and Under the Snow shows the "secret kingdom" below the snow as a child and father go cross-country skiing. Christopher Silas Neal uses the cutaway to show the reader what is happening under the snow while we watch the progress of the skiing duo. There's a short, information section at the end of the book that shares additional resources, information about each animal in the story, and teaches the reader about the subnivean zone.

Owl Moon and Over and Under the Snow have some nice text-to-text connections, aside from snow: parent-child adventure in the snow, animals, the color palette of the illustrations.

Snowflake Bentley (1999 Caldecott winner) is a condensed biography of Wilson Bentley, the first person to use a microscope and camera to take photos of single snowflakes. Through his work, we learned that no two snowflakes are alike. He did the hard work of figuring out what equipment to use, how to preserve the snowflakes until he could take the photo, and took more than 5,000 photos of snowflakes in his life.

Photo from Jerico Historical Society

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