Signs of Spring?

The weather made it quite challenging today to continue with our planned lesson of looking for signs of spring, but we took advantage of the wonderfully sticky snow and rolled huge snowballs! This turned into a great lesson to compliment our force and motion study. What kind of force will you need to move the snowball? Will you need a push, pull, or both? How much force will you need to push a small snowball versus a large one? After this experiment, we headed into the woods with Amy Butler from North Branch to enjoy a fire and a Seneca story of the old woman who covered the world in ice and snow with the help of her good friend North Wind. When spring comes knocking at her door, what will she do? In the story, spring uses his magical wand to melt her and everything around him, so of course we had to make our own wands! Tomorrow we will use them to send winter away. I wonder if it will work?