Teriffic Snowballs

On Friday, I was working with one of the toddlers who is moving up to the preschool next week. This past week, he has been spending the mornings in the preschool room and then going back to the toddler room. Unfortunately, their schedules conflict so he hardly had any outside time. It was exciting for the kids on Friday because it had snowed really for the first time this winter. It was the first time they could actually play in the snow so we decided to take him out with the toddlers. We spent an hour out there just playing. At one point, I decided to make a snowball. B got very excited and wanted to carry the snowball around with him the whole time even while he was on the swing. I wanted him to hold on to the swing so I offered to hold the snowball. Then we talked about how the snowball might melt a little bit in my hand. When he was done swinging, we noticed that the snowball had gotten smaller so we added more snow to make it bigger. When it was time to go in, he threw it and watched it fall apart.

Some other things we did in the snow were follow each other’s footprints, brush the snow off all the picnic tables and drive trucks in the snow. I think every toddler and preschooler ate some of the snow too.

Later that afternoon, we went back outside and since there weren’t that many kids, the toddlers and preschoolers were together. B was there and wanted me to make another snowball, but he wanted it bigger this time. I found some clean snow on the roof of one of the houses and made him a snowball which he carried around until his dad got there. While I was making his snowball, the preschoolers became interested in what I was doing and they wanted me to make snowballs for them. After I started making them, I realized they were throwing them at my co teacher. We laughed when she realized I was the one making them. She didn’t mind the snowball fight so we kept making them until it was time to go inside. When B’s dad came, B decided to give his snowball to one of the preschoolers to throw. Once we got inside, S who is one of the new preschoolers I work with said, “You made terrific snowballs!” That’s what she talked about for the rest of the afternoon and even told her dad all about it. I was glad to be apart of something that they really enjoyed and that they finally got some real play time outside.

Wintery Vanilla Play-dough

I finally had the chance to make homemade play-dough. It came out pretty well I think, but we’ll see how the kids like it. I got inspiration and the recipe from the Imagination Tree. She has so many great ideas and the recipe works well. The only things I added for this batch of play-dough were some glitter for sparkle and vanilla extract for scent. This will be apart of our snow and snowmen theme. I wanted the play-dough to stay mostly white plus the sparkles, but the vanilla discolored the play-dough a bit. It’s okay though because I wanted the scent there. It will be something different for the kids since all they’ve had for a while are the tiny tubs of play-dough from Walmart. I have so many more play-dough ideas that I want to share throughout the upcoming months.

Transferring Snowballs Tray Activity

I saw a similar activity on this post by Tot Play and I wanted to set up a similar activity of my own. I’ve seen similar ideas on other blogs too, but I first saw it on Tot Play so that’s the post I’m referencing.

I decided to set it up as a tray activity. I put the tongs and shovel at the top, the snowman tin on the left and on the right; I arranged the three bowls from largest at the top to smallest on the bottom. I took a course on tray activities once and it said to set up the tray as you would when you are reading. What they mean is have the very first thing the child will pick up at the top and then have the rest of the activity move from left to right as they work their way from top to bottom. They explained it better than I can, but I hope that makes sense. Since this was the largest tray I had and it still wasn’t big enough, I set it up as close as I could to that format. The snowman tin was a little too big for the tray, but I thought it was cute for the theme.

This is a great activity for fine motor skills. I started with the snowman tin closed.



Next the tin was opened and there were the assortment of snowballs. I used cotton balls, pompoms, marshmallows, beads and paper balls. The three bowls were supposed to correspond to the size of the snowball. The cotton and paper balls were for the large bowl, the marshmallows and medium sized pompoms were for the medium bowl and the beads and tiny pompoms were for the small measuring cup. The kids might decide though that some of the pompoms would work better in the larger bowl and that’s okay. They might also decide to sort them in a different way and do what makes sense to them. I included the tongs and shovel in case one or the other would be too challenging for some reason or just so they can have a choice of which object to use.





Finally, some extensions of this activity would be to make patterns with the snowballs. How many different patterns can you make? They can be sorted in a line from largest to smallest or smallest to largest. Each type of snowball can be counted and sorted. How many beads, cotton balls etc? For children who are a little bit older, you can use the snowballs to work on simple addition or subtraction problems. They can also transfer the snowballs back and forth between the bowls or pour a full bowl of snowballs into an empty bowl. How many snowballs does it take to fill up the large bowl? How many snowballs does it take to fill up the small measuring cup? How many more snowballs do you have to use to fill up the bowl if they are smaller? What other objects around the house can we use for snowballs? If you have snow outside, you can spend some time outside making different sized snowballs and doing some sorting, patterning and counting and making different sized snowmen or snow structures. Either way, playing with snow and snowballs is always fun!

Snowflake patterning

I’ve found these different colored snowflake pictures on Google Images to use for sorting and patterning. You can print out two or three copies of each picture cut them out and laminate them for sorting and patterning cards.
There are three patterns below as examples, but they can be arranged however the kids want. Patterning cards are good for beginners to learn the simple A B pattern, but they can be used for more complicated patterns as well. These can also be used as matching cards or to simply learn about colors. You could also find additional pictures of snowflakes that have different characteristics to pattern and sort with.

 

 

Special Snowman

This is a special snowman that was made by the older group of kids during my internship in 2009. I was going to post this to celebrate our first snowfall a few days ago, but that snow has already melted and we are waiting for more. I haven’t seen any other group of kids make a snowman like him since then. They had made him in the morning. It took the whole morning recess to make his huge snowballs. It was started by one kid and he did most of the work, but eventually others pitched in to help him. They realized he didn’t have a hat or mittens so they brought them out in the afternoon. They found things to use to give him a face and buttons. The kids were proud to show him off and we printed pictures to hang up and give to parents. Here he is, with all his accessories.