Katy & the Big Snow - FIAR

The boys and I love this story!(Big D loves anything construction related) 

 The story is about a tractor named Katy and in the summer she is a bulldozer, and in the winter she is a big, strong snowplow.  A big snowstorm hits the city of Geopolis.   Katy works very hard to clear all the roads in the city.  

I tied this book in with our Character Development lessons on Patience; Waiting with a happy heart and Responsibility; Doing the best at every job because Jesus is watching.

Patience:  Katy is so strong and big she had to wait for the bigger snow storms to come before she could head out to use her snowplow.

Responsibility: A big storm blanketed the city with snow so Katy had to work hard to plow all the roads.  She started getting tired, but Katy never quit until she finished the job.  

Counting 

In the beginning of the story on page 1, the author gives details about Katy in the margins; how many speeds she has, how much horsepower, her different types of attachments for her tractor, etc.

Big D and I were talking about Katy's horsepower.  She has 55 horsepower.  So we decided to count by 5's with legos....

 Big D made 11 towers with 5 legos for each tower.  Then we counted by 5's...

Then he decided to connect all the legos together to form one big tower....

Sensory Bin

I put together a bin with cotton balls, street signs, trees, a police station, and so on to make a city of Geoppolis sensory bin.

The boys had a great time playing in it.

Even Lil D practiced using his tongs.

Building our own City of Geoppolis

This was a lot of fun!

The boys worked very hard on this project and were so proud to show dad later that day.

The city had a train station.

Here is Katy at the grocery store.

Here is an arial view of the city.  The biggest building in the city was the Home Depot!

Our Home Depot even had a garden center out back.  

                        (Big D's favorite store is The Home Depot. It is a DIY type store or building supply store.)  

                                   The Highway Maintenance building where Katy lives.

While building our city I asked Big D what kind of business or buildings would we need in our city?  The Home Depot was the first business that was built!
 This task helped him understand that we need all different types of buildings and business to keep the city running smoothly.

Field Trip!

I called our town's Public Works Department and set up a date to come in and see their snowplow trucks.

Big D and Lil D could not wait for this trip!  

The day arrived and the boys were giddy with excitement!  We grabbed our brownies we made "for the snowplow men" and headed down the road.

Big D is all about construction and tools!   The first truck the two gentlemen showed us was the backhoe digger!  Oooh Big D was in heaven!

             

Next we headed into their garage where all the other trucks were kept.  Here they are in front of one of the smaller salt trucks.  It was all loaded up and ready to go for the ice storm we had a couple days later.

Big D was hoisted up into the large salt truck to check it out.

The big salt/snowplow truck.  

We learned they don't keep the snowplows/shovels hooked on the front of the trucks.  They told us they are heavy and break often.   So the shovels only go on when they are needed.

Measuring

In the story it snowed 5 feet! 

  We measured out 5 feet of string and held it up to see how high the snow would be.

It's hard to see in this picture, but he is holding a string to see how high the snow would be.

Working on glueing his street signs into his mini book...

                                              Big D's partially finished lap book.

                              Other books we read...

Resources

• homeschoolshare.com

Linking up with....






I'd love to hear from you!  Leave me a comment.Thanks!~Christine