Thursday, January 20, 2011

Snowflake Bentley

We just completed Five in A Row's Snowflake Bentley. It's a sweet biography about William Bentley and his quest to photograph snowflakes.

We learned about a lot about Vermont, old-time photography, Caldecott Medal winners, negative space, and hexagons. We learned about crystals, weather, perseverance, and sacrifice. We learned about the miracle of snowflakes and were overwhelmed at how incredibly creative our God is. We learned about sun dogs. Do you know about sun dogs? I had never heard of this phenomenon. It's very cool!


We used these directions to make our own crystal snowflakes.


We even got enough snow to go out with our mini microscopes and examine some close up.


And of course, we had hot chocolate when we came in.
What a great book and great memories. Two things that make learning fun and meaningful!

4 comments:

My Blessings From Above said...

your snowflakes came out fantastic! Thanks for the link to the sundogs! Now we will have to start watching for them. :-)

Jen said...

We just made those snowflakes yesterday after I saw them on Michelle's blog! Looks like you guys had a great time. : )

Vanessa said...

This gets me excited thinking of Felicity and Whittaker doing school activities together! Thanks for keeping us up to date with you guys's awesome school goings-on! (bad grammar, I know)

Robin said...

One of my ELL students chose that book to report on when I first went back to teaching. I had never heard of him before and loved it. Now I can't wait to do it with my kids.