Snowman/Winter Theme Ideas

Hi Friends,

Today was one of those days where I breathed a deep sigh of relief and let out a little "Whoop Whoop!" when I finally got in the door at around 7:15 PM.  12 hour work Mondays are just a little too much for my liking (okay it wasn't actually over, of course I brought stuff home to do, too).  Did anyone else have a MARATHON of a Monday??

I have finally remembered to take some photos of the fun winter art projects we have been doing.  I am going to try to remember to take pictures of the rest of our winter themed "stuff" that is around our classroom tomorrow.

I have to say that I got all of these ideas from various places...co-workers, Pinterest,  blogs, etc. and tweaked them to work for my class.  I think that's what teaching is all about...sharing ideas but also taking into consideration the needs of our own classes.

Up first...We read Snowmen at Night.  We used "snow paint" to marshmallow paint snowmen being mischievous at night!  The kiddos loved it!  I did this project slightly differently than last year.

Here is how I made my own version of " snow paint" . I added some white paint to glue and cheapo shaving cream to make the paint a little more solid white.

We used big marshmallows to paint the snowmen and mini mallows to paint the snow flakes. I clipped on clothespins to reduce the mess!

Here is our mess of a scrap paper bin.  The kids used scrap paper to decorate their snowmen.

"My snowman drinks cold choklit at night"

A snowman that likes to eat apples and bananas!

A hot dog eating snowman...maybe my students were hungry while making this project!?!

Here is another project we made after learning all about snow! I do this one every year, so I think I may have blogged about this last year. We did several snowflake science experiments to see what happens snow melts and how fast it melts in different temperatures.  We discussed that snowflakes have six sides, are made of ice crystals and dust, and are all different from one another.

We made this project by cutting paper snowflakes and taping them to blue paper to use as a stencil. Then we sponge painted over and around the paper snowflake.

Our unique snowflakes!

We talked about words that describe snowflakes. Every student thought of two words to describe their snowflake.

"My snowflake is cute and star-shaped".

"My snowflake is cute and big".

For a special math project on Friday, we worked in partners to cover a snowman shape with cotton balls.  Before doing this, students estimated how many cotton balls it would take to cover the shape.  After the project was finished, the students counted the cotton balls and recorded them on the blue paper shown.

We read The Mitten and The Hat by Jan Brett and compared/contrasted the books.  We did lots of activities to accompany The Mitten but of course, I only photographed this one!  We made a class book called Our Big Mittens.  Each page reads _____'s mitten is so big that a ____ could fit in it.  The children came up with some very creative things that could fit in their mittens!  The children cut out a mitten shape to tape over their illustration.  The mitten acts like a flap.  This book will definitely become a favorite in our classroom library!

 Hope you enjoyed the pictures.  Don't forget that I am brand NEW to Teacher's Notebook and everything in my store is 50% off today! Click here on the graphic below to check out my products.