Once There Was a Snowman...

by Krystal Swan

 


We’ve finally gotten some real snow, here in “Happy Valley”. To celebrate, the kids and I have been working on a snowman unit to practice our comparing words like “big, bigger, biggest”.



Our first project was a paper plate snowman. The kids received one paper plate for each letter in their name, plus one for the head. I had my four-year-old write his own letters, and my two- year-old traced letters that I cut out for him. And since I needed three snowman, for comparison purposes, I made one for my one-year-old as well. Once the letters were made, we hooked the paper plates together on top of each other to look like snowmen and decorated them with hats and scarves. Then we hung them up and use words like biggest, taller, smallest, shorter, etc. to describe the snowmen. We did sequences too, “Ivan’s snowman is tall, Adelia’s is taller, and Lincoln’s is the tallest of all!” 
  


Another day we did thumb print snowmen. We dipped our thumbs in white paint and pressed three thumb prints together on black construction paper to make snowmen. I let the kids do as many snowmen as they wanted. Then we decorated them with faces and scarves and arms. Then, using the opposite end of the paint brush, I had them dip it in white, and make as many snowflakes as they wanted in the sky. Then we used a piece of chalk to make the ground for the snowmen to stand on. Once our paintings were dry we filled in the blanks on the poem by counting the number of snowflakes and the number of snowmen. The poem goes like this: "______ little snowflakes fall into sight. While ______ little snowmen played all night." Then decide if you have more snowmen and less snowflakes, or the other way around. 


 

 

 

 

For a fun snack, we made snowmen-kabobs using bananas for the body, an apple slice and a grape for the hat, pretzels for the arms, a strip of fruit leather for the scarf, an orange sprinkle for the nose, and cake icing for eyes and mouth. I thought they turned out really cute, and they were tasty too! 
 

 

 

 



We made a marshmallow snowman, and talked about which circles had more marshmallows and which had less. We also talked about big, bigger, and biggest circles.

 

 


And our last big project was a yarn stitched snowman. This one was great for fine motor and concentration skills. You just take a big paper plate and a little paper plate, and punch out holes, then you use yarn to "sew" around the edges. My kids were most excited about gluing the buttons on. Once they were on we compared the buttons, "Are there more red buttons or yellow buttons?", “Are their less orange buttons than red buttons?", "Which color of buttons are there the most/least of."

And of course, Once There Was a Snowman, is a great song to use for this unit.

Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman
Once there was a snowman, 
Tall, tall, tall
In the sun he melted, melted, melted
In the sun he melted
Small, small, small.

Maybe tomorrow we can finish up the unit by going outside and building a snowman with all the fresh snow we're getting at the moment.

 

 

You can leave your thoughts, comments or suggestions here on my feedback page. Thanks!

- Krystal