I'm sure most of you are familiar with Eric Carle's popular winter book "Dream Snow." If not, you should definitely check it out! Christina over at Bunting, Books and Bright Ideas came up with a really cute idea to tie it into her lessons for teaching her students how to make predictions! And it's perfect for the chilly winter season!

The activity provided stems directly from Eric Carle's book. If you have never read it, a big snow comes in the farmer's dream and covers all his animals. You then have to use the clues provided in the text to guess which animal is covered on each page (in the book he uses a tranparency-like sheet covered in "snow" over top the animals). It would be a great idea to read the book to your students before asking them to complete their own Dream Snow page! You can use the time to practice making predictions, and then come time to complete their own sheets, your kiddos won't find themselves in the dark, so to speak!

Winter Prediction Activity

Give each student a 12" x 18" sheet of light blue construction paper. On the top half of the page have students draw an animal of their choice in a wintry scene. If you're going to have the whole class go around and make predictions, you may want to assign animals so you don't end up with 25 dogs... :)

Once the drawings are complete, attach a piece of transparency film large enough to cover the animal (make sure to just staple the sheet at the top so students will be able to lift it up to reveal the animal hidden underneath). Then, have the students paint a white mound of snow on top of the film to cover the animal (you could add a little "fake snow" to the mound to really make it come to life - if you don't have fake snow handy, you could always pull apart white craft puffs to create a similar effect).

While the mounds of "snow" are drying, have students write down their clues to help others predict what animal is hiding. Christina provided a super cute Worksheet Freebie you can use for this part of the activity! Be sure to check out her site to get your copy.

Once the children have written down their clues and the paint has dried, attach the clues to the bottom half of the construction paper and start making your predictions!