We’ve had a lot of snow in Utah lately. It is fun to write winter acrostic poetry and make Snowflake Snowmen, on a particularly snowy day in January .
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| Our cute Snowflake Snowmen turned out great! |
Have you ever heard of Snowflake Bentley? He did a book in the early 1900s of snowflake pictures from an old fashioned camera. He found that no two were ever alike. I showed the kids the book about his life and the book of pictures he published of hundreds of snowflakes. I own both of these books. They are awesome!
Then I teach the kids how to make a snowflake from a circle the parent helpers cut out for us. I think we cut them down to 5 and 4 inch circles this year so our art projects could be smaller than last year.
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| Snowflake Snowmen and Winter Acrostic Poems |
ACROSTIC POEMS:
Then after that we make a giant list of W words, then I words, then N words on the board as the kids help by brainstorming. Then we start writing the acrostic phrases or sentences (depending on how you want to differentiate) or lower grades could just copy the word.
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| Winter Acrostics |
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| Snowflake Snowman Art |
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| Snowman Bulletin Board turned out cute! |
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| I had the kids not cut on the outside of the circles so the outlines would stay intact. |
We did a lot of brainstorming of W I N T E R Words before we began our sloppy copies.
Then we made chose a hat color and some centimeter squares to make scarf and button patterns. Most kids also added a pattern above the hat brim too. Then we made swirly designs and snowflakes with crayons on the light blue paper. Some kids added some doily snowflakes and glitter glue too.
The winter acrostic poetry turned out really pretty. We just make a big brainstorm on the board of all the W starter words for good sentences. Then everybody chooses one and writes a sentence on sloppy copy newsprint lined paper, then I edit their writing.
Then I gave each child a 1/2 inch strip of brown for the twig arms. They cut off 2 little bits for the 2 “fingers” and add them on the ends of the “arms”.
I edit with the help of a parent (30 kids takes awhile) and then the next day we rewrite them on this cute Winter Acrostic paper and decorate snowman and the snowflakes on the paper. Decorative paper is a real motivator to finish for young children.
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| I have a monthly WORD BANK I put up with words the kids might use in their winter writing…..Each month the shape changes as well as the words. |
Word Work Activities and Poetry/Songs
At ABC Teach there are some cute snow similes to start everybody thinking about great words to describe the winter season. It is a great warm up. Here’s a poem we read as a chant or rap using drums and bongos and snapping our fingers.
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| Snowflake Poem we rap to….. |
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| These 2 songs are really fun to sing. I have percussion instruments and 3 xylophones that the kids can play to the songs. It’s a good way to do some shared reading with an element of fun in rereading the text. |
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| Snowflake Snowmen |
It is always funny when somebody says something off the wall, like Winnie the Pooh, for a W word on our Acrostic Poetry brainstorm. We all have a good laugh.
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| Winter Acrostics with sentences that remind us of winter things…. |
Finished bulletin board of our snowflake snowmen and winter acrostic poems.
Some of the snowmen books I read to the kids during the Snowmen project. I have about 8.
For spelling this week we made a snowman and wrote our spelling words on his belly. I don’t know what those boots are for though, nobody did! Who ever heard of a snowman with boots?
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| Spelling Activity using a snowman…..students wrote their words on the belly! |
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| Winter Poetry was fun to do in snowy January |
It’s a favorite art project of mine because it has so many dimensions to it with the glitter, the scarf and buttons, the cut out snowflakes too.
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| This song is fun to start out standing in a squat and then growing as you sing “tall, tall, tall”, and then when you are melting go back down to the squat slowly while singing “small, small, small….”. |
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| I had to include this cute picture of my grandbabies with their daddy constructed snowman. Cute right? |
SHAVING CREAM FUN:
Another fun “snow” activity I do in January is to bring out shaving cream and put about a golfball sized lump on top of everybody’s desk. Then I read them Katy and the Big Snow. They are the snowplowers (using their fingers) as we travel to Geopolis and do North, South, East and West using a N or S or E or W written in the “snow” which is the shaving cream.
By the time the story is over the room smells great and the desks are really clean. We wipe them off with a paper towel (not much cream is left after mooshing it all over for 5 minutes!). It is always a fun winter activity we do. I just ordered the Fancy Nancy winter book. It looks like fun too.
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| Here are some of my January classroom decorations I put out in place of all the cute Christmas ones. |
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| January Snowmen decorate the classroom today….. |
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| Here is my Winter bulletin board with just a few of the songs I put up to sing throughout the month of January. |
Last year we did a fun art project using a 7, and 6 inch cut out circles of white, and a 5 inch circle head for “SNOWFLAKE SNOWMEN”. After showing the kids how to fold the snowflake circle into a pie shaped piece and cut the edges into SNOWFLAKES we make our snowmen on LIGHT BLUE paper. I had 30 students this year so I cut down the sizes to smaller 3, 4 and 5 inches and used 10 x 13 paper instead of a whole sheet of construction paper. The snowmen still filled 3 bulletin boards!! lol.
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| The hat for the SNOWFLAKE SNOWMAN is 31/2 square in black with a 1 x 5 inch brim for the cute little craft. |
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| We had lots of fun making snowman art and stamping snowflakes with white paint…..this year we made our snowflakes out of white crayon and star shapes with lines on the ends. |
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| Cutest winter bulletin board of the year I think…..now we just have to write our Snowman Stories! |
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| Here is a sample!! Then we add snowflakes using white paint and some stamps we got at Lakeshore Learning Oriental Trading also has some cute ones Here. |
Lastly the kids did a pattern on the scarf using small squares of construction paper about a centimeter size. This year I got some metallic colored squares and I think that might make a more glittery looking scarf.
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| Snowman Story paper… |
Then lastly we do snowman stories just for some creative writing fun. Each snowman must have a personality. So they have to be really good at some kind of snowman talent. Then they have to also have a problem, a solution, a setting (city somewhere in the U.S.) and lots of describing words.
I’ll post our SNOWMAN STORIES very soon. They are always very fun to read.
Well, the snowmen are really cute too!
