Fun Snow-Themed Activities

It's hard to believe - especially after the holidays have come and gone - that there are three more months of winter! For many teachers, the very thought of twelve more weeks being cooped up in the classroom can cause restlessness (and a slight panic, if the truth be told!). The creators of Perfectly Preschool recommend taking advantage of the winter months for some seasonally appropriate lessons and here are a few of their snow-themed suggestions!

Math & Science

• Build Snow People. This activity will help your preschoolers strengthen shape recognition and following directions. Perfectly Preschool suggests cutting shapes from felt and having teams of students work together to construct the snow person. You might also consider using the adorable build your own snowman printables from FamilyFun or, add in some dice rolling, counting, and number recognition fun with Little Giraffes Teaching Ideas roll-a-snowman activity!
• Snowman Size Sequencing. Provide students with snowman cutouts of different sizes and invite them to order them smallest to largest, largest to smallest, etc.
• Measure the Snowfall. This Science of Snow activity should still fit the skill and age level of your preschoolers.
• Examine Ice Crystals. Perfectly Preschool recommends creating your own ice crystals with a blender and viewing them inside the classroom. You might also consider doing an outside activity like this one. Again, the lesson (if tailored just a bit) will certainly be age appropriate.

Language & Literature

• Consider using the size sequencing snowman cutouts (used in the math activity above) to create an interactive emergent reader.Other pages might include: "This snowman is smaller than this snowman.", "This snowman is larger than this snowman.", etc. If you don't feel like making your own, Making Learning Fun has several snow/snowman themed emergent reader books to print and color too!
• Design snowman alphabet cards (both upper and lowercase letters) and play a game of memory or matching.

Suggested Children's Literature Selections

• Hello, Snow! by Hope Vestergaard.
• Emmett's Snowball by Ned Miller.
• Frozen Noses by Jan Carr.
• There Was A Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow by Lucille Colandro.
• First Snow by Emily Arnold McCully.
• Snowballs by Lois Ehlert.
• The Snowman by Raymond Briggs.
• The Friendly Snowman by Sharon Gordon.

These are just a few activities to get you started, but be sure to check out Perfectly Preschool's full snow lesson plan, as well as The Virtual Vine's snowman unit for more reading selections, fingerplays, songs, crafts, and activities for your preschool snow unit!