Snow Day, Day Two

What a treat, to wake and find snow!  It's a rare thing for Texas children to actually be able to play with real snow, but to be able to do so while learning about it...WOW!

The appearance of this lovely white stuff made for a bit of reshuffling and re-planning on my part, something I was only too happy to do.

We started our day reading this book.  A beautiful book by Raymond Briggs with no words, about a boy, a snowman, and a magical night.

Now it was time to build our own snowman.

We talked about the texture of the snow, it was cold, it was wet, it was soft, it turned hard when we squeezed it in our hands.

 There was discussion about what to use for hands, eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons.  The children remembered yesterday we used crayons for the arms and Legos for eyes and nose and so they decided these would be good choices for today.  

The children began to form balls with the snow and quickly discovered that unlike our fake snow from yesterday, this snow turned to ice rather quickly and became difficult to manipulate.

After several frustrated attempts to add a nose and mouth the children decided our snow man did not need either.

 I think he turned out just fine.  We watched him through out the day and talked about the changes we noticed as he melted.

Of course we had to stop and warm up with a cup of coco.  

After building our snowman, I wanted to redirect the children's attention back to our story.  At the end of the story the boy runs out to greet his snowman only to discover he has melted.  I wanted the children to make the connection with the Snowman from the story and our snowman.

We watched The Snowman by Raymond Briggs on youtube

here's the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCEvL_hdN2A

After revisiting The Snowman I asked the children what they would do if they had their very own, live snowman and recorded their answers.  Then we worked on snowman art.

We glued graduated circles onto blue paper, talking about small, medium, and large, then the children glued on buttons, carrot nose, and wiggle eyes.

After putting together our paper snowmen, the children glued mini-marshmallows for snowballs, and, in some cases, ears, developing their eye/hand coordination and their small motor skills.

Now it was time to add some snow.  Using a pencil's eraser and white paint the kids made it snow, snow, snow!

The morning flew by.

We enjoyed a lunch of pizza, salad, oranges, and coco, aka, warmed milk with coca added.

After lunch and nap we painted snowflakes and practiced writing letter Ss.

After both children finished painting their snowflake we cut them out and made a snowflake hat.

Aren't we snow adorable?  

After being trapped inside by the cold and wet weather for two days it was time to move our bodies and develop our gross motor skills.

SO...

we cranked up the music and we danced like a snowflake on the wind, whirling and twirling, laughing and spinning.

What a wonderful snow day we had.

See you tomorrow.

Ms. P