Snow Day!

Mary at Pitner's Potpourri is having a Snow Day Linky Party and a Happy New Year Amazon card giveaway. Check her out. Here's a link to my Snowmen---Building, Painting, Globbing post. I show the pictures below to my students, we discuss their snowmen (if they built any), and then go on to create our own snowmen in class so they have many things to include in their writing!

I love, love, love snow! I always pray that everyone is warm, has shelter, and food. Then...it's out into the snow I go to party! I love, love, love to build snowmen snow people! Check these out... ;)

I made the Red Hatter Snowlady pictured below with charcoal, scarf, sticks, and mittens from a Snowman kit given to me for Christmas in 2008 by a third grade student. His younger brother is now in my second grade class. :) I added a tiny carrot, the red hat, and Luden's cough drops (her red mouth).

This Snowlady (below) was about 5'8" tall. She had leis from our Luau celebration as hair, tangerines cut in half for her mouth, a rose for her nose, the same scarf as my Red Hatter Snowlady, my clown glasses to shade her eyes, a little Valentine basket as her purse, and a round tablecloth as her "Doo Rag." :) While I built her, my hubby sat on the porch and made fun of me rolling snowballs. My son had gone to visit a friend in Miami so I had no help. He usually lifts. It was a job getting her head on! 

 

My niece and my brother built this Snow Cowgirl on my brother's truck. I hiked through the woods to their house to get to see her. Her nose was a Dorito chip. Her mouth was a red hairband, and notice the Mardi Gras beads, too!

This is my little Iceman. We had icy snow and it was really hard to form. So, in order to have a picture (How tall does he look?), I made an iceman. The flag is one of those small flags you wave at the Fourth of July. His nose is the smallest of carrots I had, and his eyes are pea gravel. His mouth is a broken piece of gold decoration off my Christmas tree. When I showed this picture to my students, they thought he was as tall as they are...or taller! :)

I hope that we have some snow this year that packs well so I can build a snow family. I want to build a snow family including a snow dog and a snowman like this...

Don't you just love it? I would not have thought of that, but I will definitely build one like it! :)

I also saw a friend's snowfamily last year that had a snow princess. I wanna build one of those, too! Can you think of some other snowpeople to suggest? I'm always open for suggestions...maybe a hula snowgirl, a snowbaby.... Ideas, please! ;)

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! </:~)