The Snowy Day

All of our activities this week were inspired by the book The Snowy Day by Ezra Keats. 

 

Gathering Activity: Pipe Cleaner Snowflake

 
Materials Needed: White pipe cleaners and pony beads

 

We had the pipe cleaners already cut and placed 3 halves in a bag with the beads ready to go for each individual child to make one. 

 
1-Mommies crossed the three halves to make a star shape.

2-Children threaded beads onto each side of the snowflake. 

Our little ones loved doing this and would have enjoyed making several each.

Circle Time

 

We read The Snowy Day by Ezra Keats.  It is one of my favorite winter children's books.  I love the illustrations.  I love the descriptive narration.   The book is the story of a young boy's adventures playing outside in the snow.   He makes footprints in the snow, makes tracks with a stick, hits a tree, sleds, and makes snow angels.  He tries to save a snowball in his pocket, but of course it melts away.   I think the thing I like most about this book is this author's keen understanding of the thought process of a little boy.  As readers, we discover the snowy world with the sweet little boy who wants so badly to be a big boy.    The text is the perfect length for a read aloud for our twos and threes.

We sang  “Once there was a Snowman.”

Once there was  a snowman, snowman, snowman.

Once there was a snowman TALL, TALL, TALL.  (Reach to the sky).

In the sun he melted, melted, melted.

In the sun he melted. small, small, small.  (Melt into the floor).  

 

If you are unfamiliar with the tune of this song, you can find the music for the song here. 

We also used these cute snowmen I have for our flannel board and sang "One little, two  little, three little snowmen." 

 
 

Art: Marshmallow Snowman

 

We were inspired by the cute Marshmallow snowman found on the website No Time For Flashcards and had to create our own!  It was great fine motor practice.  And only a couple ended up in our little ones' mouths.  Leave it to my cute girl to be the only one to try and eat them after she had dipped them in glue!   

Materials Needed: Glue, marshmallows, construction paper with light pencil outline of a snowman, orange nose, and pens or crayons to draw features on snowman

 
1-Mommy and child trace outline of snowman with glue. 

2-Place marshmallows on the glue outline.

3-Glue on orange nose.

4-Let your child draw features on the snowman.

Snack:  Snow Cones

(The little boy in the story has a snowball that melts and he is sad.  I don’t think our little ones were too sad to eat their snowballs).  

 

We made snow cones using this awesome snow cone maker by Rival.   

We added milk, vanilla, and sugar to the shaved ice.  We wanted our snow cones to stay white like Peter's snow balls.

Activities: Snowball Fight and Shaving Cream

Snowball fight:   We had an indoor snowball fight using the cotton batting.  

 
Painting with Shaving Cream: We let the children make tracks through shaving cream on the table with sticks.  (Peter makes tracks in the snow with a stick).  We thought that the stick might help a couple of our little ones who are hesitant with new textures.  However no one seemed to have a problem with the shaving cream. They all dove right in!