Category: Winter Acrostic Poems

Snowman Art and Winter Acrostic Poems

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 .

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.

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.
Winter Acrostics 
Snowflake Snowman Art 
Snowman Bulletin Board turned out cute! 
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. 
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.

Snowflake Poem we rap to…..

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. 
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. 

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?

Spelling Activity using a snowman…..students wrote their words on the belly!
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.

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….”. 
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.

Here are some of my January classroom decorations I put out in place of all the cute Christmas ones. 
January Snowmen decorate the classroom today…..
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.

The hat for the SNOWFLAKE SNOWMAN is 31/2 square in black with a 1 x 5 inch brim for the cute little  craft. 
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. 
Cutest winter bulletin board of the year I think…..now we just have to write our Snowman Stories!  

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.

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!

Winter Acrostic Poems and Snowflake Snowman Art

ACROSTIC POEMS: 
My favorite form of poetry is ACROSTIC POETRY. It is easy and a good critical thinking skill to get kids to brainstorm lists of W words having to do with winter.

  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. 

 Then we move on to I words, then N words on the board as the kids help by brainstorming and I will help by calling out generic words like “In, Nobody, White” etc.

Word Bank of January Words – I put up a new one each month. It
really reduces the “Teacher how do you spell….?” questions a lot! 


It’s fun to then choose a favorite word from the lists we have made and come up with a sentence telling about your own favorite parts of winter. 

 As you can see, they all write about what THEY love about winter….or DON’T love….as the case may be.

 After writing our Winter Acrostic Poems, we make snowmen out of cut snowflakes and white paint stamped snowflakes and colored paper hats and scarves, with colored dot stickers for buttons.

    Winter.Acrostics and Snowflake Snowmen…..
Snowman Art using snowflakes is really a pretty bulletin board outside our classroom for January. 

After everybody has the WIN of winter, we move to T words, then E words then R words. I write them as a LIST under each letter so it’s easy for the kids to choose a word to start with. 

After writing our Winter Acrostic Poems, we make snowmen out of cut snowflakes and white paint stamped snowflakes and colored paper hats and scarves, with colored dot stickers for buttons. 

 Here are our finished Winter Acrostic Poems on our bulletin board. Super cute.

    Well, the snowmen are really cute too!

I have a huge collection of Winter Books and Stories; non fiction and fiction that fill my bookcase. Here
are just a few of my favorites. 

We sing Songs about Snowmen too. Here is one to the tun of Itsy Bitsy Spider.

 Last year we did Penguin Acrostic Poems with footprint Penguin Art….

Here is the Footprint and thumbprint penguins painted black on blue paper. I added glitter glue stars afterwards. They 
These stickers are really cute to add to the writing projects we do. I love them! 
And here are our PENGUIN ACROSTIC POEMS….They were really cute too. 

 Penguin Footprint Art with baby thumbprint penguins too. This one took a LONG TIME to finish because I had to paint with the kids practically 1 on 1. So this year we did tear art penguins with penguin stories. They are almost done.

I have literally dozens of penguin books in my  classroom library. I love all of the Tacky the Penguin ones especially. 


My favorite Penguin Children’s Book of all Time. I try to do “Text Sets” of non-fiction books AND story books on the same topics or themes.


 The they make their own sentences and we try to add an adjective to each of them. They always turn out beautiful and wintery sounding.

Snowflake Snowmen and Winter Poems

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.

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!

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.

Snowflake Poem we rap to…..


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.

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. 

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….”. 
I had to include this cute picture of my grandbabies with their daddy constructed snowman. Cute right? 

SHAVING CREAM FUN:
Then after recess I bring out shaving cream and press about a golfball or bigger 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. They smooth it all over their desks and then draw a map of the city using fingertips. I wish I would have snapped a few pictures. 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.

Here are some of my January classroom decorations I put out in place of all the cute Christmas ones. 
Cute Snowflake Snowmen….made from handmade paper snowflakes…no two are ever alike! 

January Snowmen decorate the classroom today…..

After everybody has the WIN of winter, we move to T words, then E words then R words. I write them horizontally and then write the words the kids come up with vertically under each letter. My class make their own sentences after choosing one of the words to start the phrase or sentence.
Cute bulletin board set I love…..

Here is my Winter bulletin board with just a few of the songs I put up to sing throughout the month of January.

Then we do 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.

The hat for the SNOWFLAKE SNOWMAN is 31/2 square in black with a 1 x 5 inch brim for the cute little  craft. 
We had lots of fun making snowman art and stamping snowflakes with white paint…..
Cutest winter bulletin board of the year I think…..now we just have to write our Snowman Stories!  

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. And they added buttons from the same squares and colored in the cheeks on the face. They also added the twig arms and a strip of color on the black hats. This year I got some metallic colored squares and I think that might make a more glittery look

.Here are the CARDSTOCK MOSAIC SQUARES or just cut your own out of strips of centimeter sized construction paper. Then have the kids snip their own squares….they can do it.

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 stories  soon. They are always very fun to read.