Circle/Quiet Time:
Talk about the different types of weather and seasons. You can use a weather wheel made from card stock and pictures from Hubbardscupboard.org
Have fun showing how snow falls using your fingers to trace a pattern and talking about cold. You can also add information about same and different; all snow flakes are different (show different ones you have cut out) and that all children are different too.
Science Activity:
Sensory Bottles: This is one my youngest daughter’s favorite activities. Whenever we go to the Children’s Museum she spends a great deal of time “chasing” the floaters in the floor to ceiling sensory tube in the play area. See also fine motor skills.
Instructions: Use an empty 12 oz plastic bottle, such as coke, Gatorade, water. Clean it out and remove the labels. Fill with ¼ cup corn syrup, silver and while glitter and water. I like to glue gun the lid onto the bottle so that I can use it for longer. For a second bottle fill it with ¼ detergent with water. Let you child shake the bottles and talk about which one looks more like snow.
Fine Motor:
Spray your child’s activity table with shaving cream and allow them to play in it making swirls and piling it up to make “snow” drifts. For imaginary play add people (I like the Fisher Price Little People).
You can also allow them to play with large ice cubes sliding them around and talk about how ice causes you to slide when you walk on it. For an art variation for the older ones add tongs and paint and allow them to ice paint.
Create your own snowman using play dough.
Gross Motor:
Try playing freeze tag. For the older children you can instruct and supervise the regular game. For younger ones try this variation: allow them to run around, move around, swing arms, march in place, whatever motions they would like and when you say “FREEZE” they have to stop. If you want to add music, treat it a little like musical chairs.
Musical Freeze Tag: Play music and dance around with your child. When you stop the music you both have to freeze. This works best with a remote control.
If you live where it snows, go outside and “track’ the prints in the snow. Try to guess what kind of animal may have walked in the snow where you are looking – even if it’s just the family pet. Stay away from the yellow snow!
Music:
Melting Snow Man: Use the poem “Three Snowman”
Three big snowman (three fingers) , Standing in a row, (arms out to your sounds making you look round) out came the sun and one melted so slow (slink slowly down to the ground); Two big snowman (two fingers) standing up tall (stand way up tall and straight, reach arms up), the sun kept shining (make a round circle over head with fingers touching for sun); now one is small, (kneel down small); One big snowman (1 finger) He’ll be fine, we’re told, The wind outside is very cold (hug yourself to keep warm and shiver).
Song: “Frosty the Snowman “
Art:
Season Sort: Best if done by older toddler or preschool. Cut out pictures of people doing things in magazines such as swimming, golf, tennis, skiing, snowboarding (activities that take place during specific seasons). Make a grid on paper with season’s a sun for summer, leaves for fall, and flowers for spring and snow for winter. Assist you child with placing the correct picture with the correct season.
Create a Snowman: There are two different ways to do this. The first uses three paper plates that are glued together edge to edge. Add a black construction paper top hat as well as a triangle cut out for nose, poms for buttons and nose and any other scraps you may have, for example, tissue paper for the scarf. You can add a yard string at the top and hang it on the front door at home or along the classroom wall.
If you prefer you can also use cut outs: three white circle cut outs, black triangle cut out for nose, black square cut out for hat and three blue cut outs for the buttons.
Either project is also good for contrasting white and black as well as reinforcing shape recognition.
Matching Mittens: Trace your child’s hand on different colored construction paper, but instead of tracing each finger, round the top of the hand to make the shape of a mitten. For extra help, have your child wear a mitten and talk about dressing different for cold weather and hot weather. Cut out the different colored mitten shapes and play a matching game. For parents and children hold up your mitten, ask what color it is and ask them where their “blue, yellow, whatever color” mitten is. This project is also good for reinforcing color skills. If you would like, you can use a variation, by mixing and matching mitten shapes of different sizes. This works especially well if you have different aged children or if you would like to do big and small with your hands and your child’s.
Letter of the Week: S
Colors of the Week: White and Blue
Books: “Katy and the Big Snow,” by Virginia Lee Burton; a story about a snow plow that “could”; “Winter Babies Wear Layers,” by Michelle Sinclair Colman and Nathalie Dion and “Animals in Winter,” by Henrietta Bancroft and Helen Davie.
Video: Now’s the time to pull out your old “Frosty the Snowman” DVD, you may have had it out for Christmas.
Cost of plans: You may have most of these things on hand, but for the more unusual here is a estimated cost to supplement the supplies you have: corn syrup $4.50, books free at the library but each of them cost approximately $6.95; glitter at the dollar store is appropriately $1.00. Total approximate costs $10.00 if you make purchases.
For more Lesson Plans visit my Associated Content homepage. Lesson Plans now available: Night Time, Potty Training, Color Recognition, Learn about Your Body, and Zoo Time
