Let it Snow

Playing in the snow is so much time and this was the perfect snowy day.  Children tried to catch the softly falling snowflakes on their toungue.  They noticed that everything was covered with snow and they couldn't use the playground equipment. 

"I want to catch a snowflake on my tongue." ""Me too, I want to catch one too." "I got one, I got one!"

"Look Morah, the my mittens are cover all in snow, the snow is sticky."

"We found a blue sled!"  "Let's take it up the hill so we can go down."

The children really had a blast sledding down the hill and playing in the snow. It was great to see them work together to pull the sled up the hill, take turns sledding and help each other walk in the snow. They worked together as a team, helped each other and happily shared. That's a huge deal for two and three year-olds! Of course I was so proud of them and gave them lots of praise which ultimately made them so proud of themselves.

"I want to go up hill, it's not going, can you help me?"  "Yeah, I can't, it's too hard, too heavy, can't do it, you have to get off."  "Why?"  "We have to pull the slep up the hill." 

"I want to pull, can I pull it up?"  "OK, here, you can have a turn, can we slide down together?"

Snowman

We all love snowmen. They’re round, huggable, fun to make and of course timeless. They are like the kings of winter, standing proudly on snow covered lawns confirming that winter is here and boy is it cold. As a child I remember putting so much effort into building these frosty fellows. I’d dress them in old clothes, give them names and even build whole snow families. Naturally, snowmen have played a big role in our winter unit. They provided fun filled opportunities for chilren expand their knowledge and practice many skills. 



 Children practice counting, one-to-one corespondence and number recognition while playing this snowman counting game. 

Snowmen are a great way to learn about big, medium and small.  Children watched me draw three snowmen on the board.  I described each part of the snowmen as I was them and asked children what I should draw next and what was still missing.  We counted the snowmen and I numbered them to help children practice number recognintion.  They noticed that the snowmen were not the same size. That was a great conversation piece.  "The biggest is the daddy snowman, this one is the mommy, and little one is baby snowman." They knew which was biggest and smallest and I introduced medium.  Then we talked about the circles on the snowmen and how they are also small, medium and large.  So much learning and fun and this was just a morning mini-lesson, something to get those little wheels turning :)

Later we made our own snowmen.  Because we had that mini-lesson I felt confident in just providing the children with a piece of blue paper and three different sized circles to let them make their snowmen.  With no help at all they arranged their circles accordingly and then added some details like eyes and nose.

 

Here we are making snowballs out of play doh.  This task requires a great deal of patience, concentration and fine motor skill for a two/three year olds.  This was great, we love play doh in our class.  As children worked we talked about the shape, size, texture and practiced counting.

                                     

We even made a snowman on our stage.  Well, it wasn't exactly made of snow :)  This guy was made of garbage bags stuffed with pillows.  Nevertheless, it was fun to work together as a team and arrange the bags while playing a little balancing act since making a garbage bag snowman can be a bit tricky. 

It was even more fun to hug him :)

 

We also made a real snowman in our classroom, that is made of real snow.  During circle time children helped me make the snowballs and shape the little fellow but we didn't stop there...

We used Mr. Potato Head parts to personalize our little snowman.  We even tried a few different parts to see which looked best.  It was so much fun....

 

And look at how cute he came out.

We decided we didn't realy have to go outside to have some fun with the snow.  So I would bring snow into the classroom and fill the water table pretty much on a daily basis during center time.  Children put their mittens on and to work.  We would do some experimenting with the snow.  Here are some of the questions I posed and children did their experimenting to figure out the answers.

Where do you think the snow will melt faster, on the hand wearing a mitten or on the hand without a mitten?

What do you think would happen to the snow if we turned on the water table? (water pours out of the silver fountain)

How long do you think the snow can stay in our classroom without melting?  Do you think there will be snow still in the water table by snack time?  What about at lunch time, do you think the snow will still be here?