This past week we rowed Five in a Row (FIAR) title A Storm in the Night. I decided to go ahead and row this book since we had been inundated with thunderstorms the previous several weeks. Of course, as soon as we started we had nothing but sunny skies!
A Storm in the Night proved to be a bit more difficult at first than our first FIAR book The Story About Ping. The book was mostly dialogue and in order to help the kids follow the book a bit easier I used different voices for the characters.
We discussed the use of onomatopoeia for the first time. I realized that we had a wonderful supplemental book for this discussion called The Listening Walk by Paul Showers. Every single page has a new sound that the young girl hears as she goes on her listening walk with her father. We decided to go on our own listening walk and talk about the different sounds that we could hear. Then we figured out how we could make those sounds into words and made our own book .
We discussed how we know people are feeling by the expressions they have on their face. We made a mini booklet drawing the characteristics of different facial expressions. I also dug out some old pictures so that Hailey could note the changes as people get older.
For science we focused in on the Water Cycle. We made our model of earth and its atmosphere by taking a plate of water and placing it in one side of a large tupperware container. We closed the top and placed a heat lamp above the side of the tupperware with the water to represent the sun. On the opposite side we placed a bag of ice cubes to represent the cold air in the upper atmosphere. As the lamp (sun) heated the water the water evaporated (turned to water vapor) and condensed (formed a cloud) as it rose and hit the bag of ice (cold air) on the opposite side. Once the water droplets became large enough they fell (rained) back to the plate (ground).
We also decided to learn more about clouds. We learned four of the basic types of clouds – Stratus, Cumulus, Cirrus, and Nimbus. I found some great pictures of clouds here, Royalty free! We charted what clouds we saw in the morning and guessed what type of weather we would see that afternoon. In the afternoon we would check the weather again to see if we were right. I also had Hailey make a rain gauge out of an old peanut butter jar and a ruler. I took the top off of the jar, turned it upside-down and filled it with spare change to weight it down. Then I taped it with packing tape to the bottom of the jar to keep it from blowing away.
These are some of the graphics that I created while doing the lapbook for A Storm in the Night. Please feel free to download and use for your own personal, not-for-profit, use.
Cloud Types – Thanks to Carl Wozniak for the great cloud pics on this graphic. You can get more here free for educational purposes.
I will be posting pictures of our completed lapbook in the next couple of days.
Filed under: Five in a Row, Homeschool, Lapbook | Tagged: cloud types, fiar, Five in a Row, Homeschool, Lapbook, Lapbook Resources, learning folders, storm in the night, water cycle |
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