Snowmen--building, painting, globbing

Mary at Pitner's Potpourri is having a linky party and giving away an Amazon gift card! Come on over and join the "snowy" fun!

Erin over at Teaching with Love...in heels has a post about using shaving cream and glue to make a snowman, which prompted me to share this. In January in Georgia, we sometimes get snow. The children are always excited about snow. I  play it up big time by asking how they build snowmen when/if we have snow. For the past two years, we've had enough snow to have snow days. I hope for at least one snow day every year because it plays right in to my plans! I build snowmen whenever possible, so I take loads of pictures. I share those pictures with my students along with pictures and stories of snowmen, snowladies, and snowbabies past. At least one child usually always says s/he wishes s/he could spend the  snow day with me!

Then I usually bring out the paint and my students take about 3 days to finish all their painting. This year, I am going to use the shaving cream and glue Erin does. They can "glob" on Day 1, then add construction paper on Day 2 to finish their snowman. Painting with several colors always takes longer so they don't mix the colors too much. I'll put painting on hold this year.

Here's another example of a Shaving Cream Snowman at Oopsey Daisy.

For this project…

* Mix equal parts of shaving cream and Elmer’s glue.  The mixture dries puffy just like this.

* Use your fingers to spread the shaving cream mixture and create your snowmen on blue cardstock.

* Add cardstock pieces to form the eyes, nose, mouth, hat, and arms.  (I used ribbon for the scarf.)

I also found  Jen doing this Oil Pastel Snowman activity at Runde's Room. We'll do this one, too. I love oil pastels...have since I first used them in Art class when I was a fifth grader.

So to incorporate this into my curriculum, we will write about how to build a snowman, how to glob a snowman, and how to draw a snowman using oil pastels. Writing about snowmen and all the different ways to create them helps me get my children writing three or more paragraphs in preparation for third grade. I always make a HUGE deal out of the writing. We post these on the wall outside our classroom so that everyone can see our snowmen and our marvelous writing.
I also found the following recipe for which I will pick up the ingredients on my way home when they predict snow. I want to bring these in to my students after the snow so they have one more thing about which to write. I found this at Kathie Cooks.

Mixed-Up Snowman Snacks
Ingredients:

Pretzel Sticks
Junior Mints Candies

Orange Sprinkles (the long variety)
Fruit Roll-ups, cut into strips
Small Marshmallows
Mini Chocolate Chips

Sandwich Baggies

This will be our morning snack even though I never allow morning snacks with more than 7 grams of sugar! I'm sure the children will be so crazy wild excited anyway that a little extra sugar won't change things the first day after snow!

Finally, we'll have snowman cookies to celebrate completion of our writing whenever it is finally done displayed for all to see! Check these out at Crazy Domestic. I like the easy way she does them best of all. :)
You might also order one for $10.00 at Cookies for Ken to help raise money for his leukemia/bone marrow transplant treatment. It's an amazing story of love and friendship!

 

Happy Snow Days! </:~)