a full week of snow themed activities

Snow in central North Carolina does happen…it’s juts more like a winter miracle when it does. We spent all week learning about snow, so maybe we’re willing it to snow here? Maybe! *insert snow dance*

In this post I’m sharing most of what my daughter and I enjoyed during our snowy week of activities. Most are play-based activities and all are geared for ages 4-7. My daughter is 5 for reference 😉

Although I am a homeschool mama, these activities can be used by anyone needing some fun things to put in their back pockets for rainy or snowy (like, actual snow!) days at home.

As part of our regular school days, I currently use the morning bins from Moffat Girls as my daughter’s daily warm up/independent practice, and I just switched over to the January themed bundle. Each skill practiced in the bundle for this month (reading, language arts, phonics, math) is with a winter theme (snowballs, snowflakes, penguins, polar bears, etc.), so this tied in nicely to our snowy week.

I wanted something really engaging while we were out on break from our co-op, so I planned one read aloud and one activity for each day of the week to make up a full week. I have two additional activities at the end of this post that we ended up doing too. One was on a rainy Sunday, and it was really helpful to have books and ideas ready to go! Be sure to check out my Favorite Winter Books post for the complete list!

Monday

Book: Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

Activity: Making snowflakes with tooth picks and marshmallows. In this book, you’ll learn that snowflakes have six sides. That fact was the only guiding factor I gave my daughter…whatever she created had to have six sides! (just a PSA, this book is so, so interesting…)

Tuesday

Book: Life cycle of snow from Teaching Mama

Activity: Homemade snowy playdough

Here’s how I made the snow [dough]:

• 1 cup cornstarch
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 tbsp oil (I used baby oil *sniff, so good!* but if you’re worried they’ll put it in their mouths, use a cooking oil)
• 1 cup of boiling water
• silver glitter
• Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, and then slowly add in the boiling water. 
• Let it cool down, then knead it until it’s smooth and soft. The stickiness will subside, the more you knead, don’t worry!
• Add in the glitter!
• We glammed up our snowflakes with pom poms, sequins, and sprinkles to make each unique

Wednesday

Book: There was a Cold Lady who Swallowed some Snow

Activity: Sequencing activity from ABCs of Literacy

Thursday

Book: Snow by Uri Shulevitz

Activity: Step by Step How to Draw Snowflakes and Snowflake writing prompt

My daughter loved how I broke down how to draw a snowflake! I forgot how beneficial these directed drawing activities can be.

I had a Snowflake writing prompt sheet from this Winter Literacy and Math no-prep pack. You could also simply do a writing prompt of “A snowflake is…” in a journal and allow your child to illustrate and write their favorite fact that they’ve learned this week so far. My favorite primary journal is this one. Obviously, older students should be encouraged to write more than one fact 😉 Before doing this activity, we brainstormed together all that we had learned so far. It’s fascinating to learn what stuck to them!

Friday

Book: Snow by Cynthia Rylant

Activity: Snowflake resist art with watercolor paint

This art activity paired nicely with Cynthia Rylant’s book, because the colors of paint chosen really emphasized the moods of snow from the book!

I simply drew snowflakes with a white crayon on watercolor paper (you can also use regular paper), and let my daughter paint over it to discover the snowflakes and a secret message from mom 😉

Bonus Books and Activities:

Book: Brave Irene by Willian Steig

Activity: Snowstorm painting (This might have been my favorite activity….)

This book was new for us this year, and it quickly has become a favorite. My daughter was on the edge of her seat wondering if Irene could make it through the snowstorm and make it back home!

We made our own snowstorm using paints, sponge brushes, glue, and sugar sprinkles as the icy snow.

After painting our entire paper, we left it dry before swirling our liquid glue around like how Irene described the wind in our book. We then added our sprinkles for the full effect of icy snow. So fun!

Book: No Two Alike by Keith Baker

Activity: Making good ol’ fashion snowflakes using white cupcake liners or coffee filters. The book No Two Alike is a GREAT book to pair with this activity, because each snowflake turns out so unique. *This also lends itself nicely to explaining how God created us each uniquely with our own special talents and traits*

We used these activity trays for almost all of our activities! They kept our materials together with less mess, and were easy to transport an almost-done-but-not-quite project to another surface until we can pick it back up again.

Overall, it was a really great week learning about snow and making some art (and some messes!). You could say it was sno-much fun 😉

Any of these activities can be done individually, and are not dependent upon a full week study…just plan ahead, mama, and have some fun with your kiddos!

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.