CLICK HERE FOR FREE BLOGGER TEMPLATES, LINK BUTTONS AND MORE! »

Sunday, January 22, 2012

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! 


10 comments:

Anonymous

What wonderful activities - my girls love this book!

Aleacia

Looks like everyone had a blast! We have that snow cone maker, I never thought to bring it out during winter! We'll have to read The Snowy Day and eat yummy snow cones :)

Dana Brunner

I love all the activities you did, we just read Snowy Day also . I'm really impressed with your blog and so glad I found it. Please stop by and see my blog.
http://playandlearnwithdana.blogspot.com/

Unknown

Fun!! I love all the activities and the kids look like they had a blast!

Kristina

Adorable!!!

Amanda @ Gratefully Growing in Grace

Just found your blog via Pinterest and I'm drooling with desire to do each and every one of your activities!

Unknown

You had so much fun! I love the rhyme about the snowman. Your craft and cooking project look like fun too.

Unknown

This is a really neat site... I just found a link from pintrest. I'm going to sign up to follow you. I love that you add fingerplays & songs with your activities and books. Thats great.

I would love to have you come take a look at my blog sometime
www.penpalsandpicturebooks.com

I'm looking forward to spending some more time going through yours.

Susan Case

You have a wonderful blog. I've copied your button for my Linky Page and am following you. I hope you will visit my blog. Today and tomorrow my book "Kindergarten: Tattle-Tales, Tools, Tactics, Triumphs and Tasty Treats for Teachers and Parents" ebook is free: http://kindergartenbasics.blogspot.com/2012/02/my-kindergarten-book-free-on-kindle-for.html

Unknown

Looks wonderful activities! My students are studying seasons . . . I'll use some of these activities!

Post a Comment

Thank you for your comments! I love hearing from the readers of my blog. It makes my day! I have recently had a lot of inappropriate spam that has snuck through, so I am turning on the moderation of comments for a short time, to see if it helps. I am so sorry for any inconvience this may cause, but I want to remain a family friendly blog. -Danielle @Mommy and Me Book Club