Cheers! 🎄 I have a special blog post today. I wrote a short (247-word) Christmas story for Susanna Leonard Hill's Holiday Writing Contest for children's writers. Since this blog is about dance and movement, I have also created a movement activity for children three to six years old, to go along with the story. I hope you enjoy reading the story Sparkle the Snowflake, and then dancing the story with your little ones!
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Sparkle the Snowflake
by Connie Bergstein Dow
Everyone knows that no two snowflakes are alike, but Sparkle was extra special. She shone and shimmered a little brighter than all of the other snowflakes that lived in her cluster of clouds.
Sparkle and her snowflake friends had an important job to do. They were to fall to earth on Christmas Eve. They would cover the hills and trees, and especially the rooftops of the houses, so that Santa and his reindeer would leave their footprints on the rooftops for children to see on Christmas morning.
The snowflakes were busy the day before Christmas. They carefully planned their journey from the clouds. They practiced floating and staying together so they could create a beautiful snowfall that evening.
Sparkle and all of the other snowflakes snuggled deep into the billowy clouds to get some rest before the busy night. Soon, Sparkle woke up and looked around in alarm. It was almost midnight! “Wake up!” Sparkle called. Then she soared from cloud to cloud, making sure that every snowflake was ready.
Just in the nick of time, they slipped from the puffy clouds and began to twirl and dance in the chilly night air. The snowflakes landed gently, and waited silently. When the sun peeked over the hill, the snowflakes heard children laughing as they ran from their houses and saw the glistening snow. Little did the children know that the snow that had greeted them this Christmas morning was all thanks to Sparkle, the shiny little snowflake.
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Here is a lively and playful creative movement activity for 3-6-year-olds
*If available, play some holiday or other music for background as the children dance.
*Optional props: "snowflakes" -- shower scrubbies or netting strips tied together
Dance the Story of Sparkle the Snowflake
Imagine you are a little snowflake. What shape are you? Now try a different one. And now one more. Which do you like best?
Now think of what it would be like to practice your snowfall, floating softly through the sky.
Snuggle deep into your cloud. Pretend to drift off to sleep, thinking of something you like about the holidays, and imagine your are dreaming. Wake up quickly, sit up, and show what your face looks like when you think you have overslept. Hop out of your billowy cloud as fast as you can!
Soar from cloud to cloud, waking up all of your snowflake friends. Now, imagine you are ready to fall to the ground. Slip out of your cloud. Dance in the cold night air! Twirl, swirl, tumble slowly and quickly, get blown by the wind from side to side, up and down, around and around. Finally, you float gently to the ground.
Now imagine you are one of the children in the story. Run out of your house, see the snow, and jump up and down. Play in the snow!
Have an imaginary snowball fight! (Use optional snowflake props here). Make footprints in the snow. Now, imagine you are sledding down a steep hill. Fall out of your sled at the bottom of the hill and land in the soft snow.
Roll snowballs and make a giant snow person. What does it look like? Now, imagine you are the snow person. Make yourself into a snow person shape. Uh-oh -- the sun comes out! What happens? Slowly melt to the ground.
The activity ends with a free dance to music. Prompt the children to dance about ideas from the Sparkle the Snowflake story, the imaginary playtime in the snow, and anything else they like about winter. Use the props again if you have them. Ask the children to throw them up in the air all together at the end of the dance to make a "blizzard."
It looks like this mid-winter blog post is happening on a snow day for lots of children and parents! So I thought I would offer a few indoor activities to keep the children busy, and their imaginations active, to supplement the outdoor play in the cold and snow. Winter Fun: Draw and Dance After playing outside, draw a picture of all of the things you did: Did you make snow angels? Did you build something with the snow, such as snowballs, a snow fort, snow people? Did you sled ride or go down the hill on a saucer? Did you make footprints in the snow?
Once you have finished drawing about your outside adventures, find a space where you can dance about them! Some fun musical choices for accompaniment are Snowy Owl by Debbie Clement, Cozy Bug Twist by David Jack, and Frosty the Snowman. Indoor Snowballs
Shower scrubbies make wonderful indoor snowballs!
I like to use items that I already have around the house for creative movement play. The shower scrubby pictured at right is one such item. I buy them in packs when I find them on sale, and scrubbies made from recycled plastic are often available. Using one scrubby per child, put on some music and ask the child or children to try to throw it up in the air and catch it. See how many times they can do it in a row without dropping it. Now have them toss it back and forth to another child and do the same thing: How many times can you throw it to each other and catch it without dropping it? Now try the same two activities above, but try to do them in time to the music. Feel and clap the beat first, and then try to toss the snowball to the beat. See how long they can do that without dropping it! If you have access to a large number of scrubbies and you have a group of children, give each one a scrubby and put on some upbeat music. Ask them to do a snowball dance using the scrubby as a prop. At the end of the dance, they can all throw the scrubbies in the air at the same time to make a blizzard.
Dance a Blizzard!(the children in this photo are using home-made snowflakes, made by tying strips of netting together)
Make Snowflakes, then Dance and Freeze in Snowflake Shapes!
Cut out several snowflakes using computer-type white paper. Put on some upbeat music and ask your child or children to dance about the falling snow.
Stop the music, hold up one of the snowflake shapes, and ask the children to make that snowflake shape with their whole body. Repeat several times, using all of the snowflakes one by one. When the music is finished, ask the children to freeze in their favorite snowflake shape to end the dance.
I'm continuing my pursuit of activities that will introduce my 2-year-old granddaughter, Zoey, to winter ... even while living in San Diego! Of course, you'll find activities for a variety of ages in my post today ... activities that would work for 2 year olds and some that would even work for first graders. You'll find lots of free snowflake printables in my Free Snowflake Printables and Montessori-Inspired Snowflake Activities. Here, I'm sharing some Montessori-inspired snowflake activities using free printables for preschoolers through first graders. You'll find many activities for preschoolers through first graders throughout the year along with presentation ideas in my previous posts at PreK + K Sharing. You'll also find ideas for using free printables to create activity trays here: How to Use Printables to Create Montessori-Inspired Activities. At Living Montessori Now, I have a post with resource links of Free Printables for Montessori Homeschools and Preschools. Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links at no cost to you. Do-a-Dot Snowflakes
Free Printable: Do-a-Dot Snowflakes from Life is Peachy
This was super easy to prepare. I just printed out the do-a-dot snowflakes on printer paper. I added the snowflakes to a large plastic tray from Montessori Services along with washable Do-a-Dot markers. My granddaughter loved it! Snowflake Matching Activity
Free Printable: Snowflake Matching Cards from PreKinders This was also very easy to prepare. You just need to print and cut out the printables. You can laminate them if they'll get a lot of use. I like that this matching activity can be very challenging. At the same time, you could use just a few sets of snowflakes for younger children. If you want to make it extra challenging you could add them all to one basket like I did here. Otherwise, you could separate the two sets. Snowflake Counting Activity
Free Printable: Snowflake Number Mats by Kim from Life Over C's for Playdough to Plato I appreciate that this printable uses multicultural children. Zoey couldn't wait to work with this activity. The snowflake gems are especially inviting. (They'll be perfect for a variety of snowflake activities, including snowflake transfer activities.) There are enough in a package to have 55 that are needed for all the number cards. I just put the snowflake gems in a glass bowl to make them look especially sparkly and placed them on a Multicraft tray.
I used a Montessori Services rug for the layout. This is a bit like Montessori cards and counters except that I didn't place the snowflakes in rows of two to emphasize odd and even.
Snowflake Movable Alphabet CVC Spelling
Free Printable: Snowflake CVC Center by Eat Pray Travel Teach at Teachers Pay Teachers This was also super easy to prepare. It just requires printing out and laminating the cards. I love themed movable alphabet activities as fun extensions for the Montessori movable alphabet.To make it even more like a Montessori movable alphabet, you could trace over the vowels in blue and the consonants in red.
Free Printable: Heart Snowflake (template #2) from Mia's Craft Ideas In the photo, I used the printable from KinderArt. You could make the printable larger by changing the setting on your printer. Whether you enlarge it or not, it's a creative version of snowflake folding and cutting. As children become comfortable with making a snowflake using a pattern, you could introduce the template from Mia's Craft Ideas to give children more ideas for creating heart-shaped snowflakes. More Free Snowflake Printables Go to my post at Living Montessori Now for links to free snowflake printables from around the blogosphere: Free Snowflake Printables and Montessori-Inspired Snowflake Activities. More Montessori-Inspired Winter Activities
Deb Chitwood is a certified Montessori teacher with a master’s degree in Early Childhood Studies from Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, England. Deb taught in Montessori schools in Iowa and Arizona before becoming owner/director/teacher of her own Montessori school in South Dakota. Later, she homeschooled her two children through high school. Deb is now a Montessori writer who lives in San Diego with her husband of 40 years (and lives in the city where her kids, kids-in-law, and toddler granddaughter live). She blogs at Living Montessori Now.
I use Prezis all the time in my classroom. For this Prezi, I put together my favorite videos and links to activities that I like to use during the winter months. The sections I have included on the Prezi are: videos for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa;
snowmen videos; a wonderful unit on snowflakes with activities and videos;
and four different fireplaces that you can project in your classroom, on the Smartboard or big TV.
I found "burning fireplaces" on Youtube and inserted the video into a cozy fireplace, so it looks like you have a cozy fire in your classroom as the students work! Two of the fireplaces are crackling fires and the other two have Christmas carols playing as the fire burns.
As I find more videos and activities that I use in winter, I will continue to add to this Prezi- for example Groundhog Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I hope you enjoy it!
Happy New Year to all of you! It's Carolyn from Kindergarten: Holding Hands and Sticking Together. For many of us, snow is now a fact of daily life...so I thought I would just go ahead and embrace it for this post and share some snowflake ideas that I love to use in my classroom- and some new ones that I found to try! I love to have everything together, like in a file at school, where I can just go and know the ideas are all in one place. I thought you might like that, too. SO- Get ready for lots of snow books, activities, classroom games, online games, food ideas, videos, Science lessons, and lots of TPT freebies!
I love those first few flakes. They are magical in the classroom- so magical that anything that had been planned for the moment the children see snowflakes in the air for the first time is no longer the plan. There is a new plan- called watching the snowflakes! For me, it was November 8th at 2:28. The day was done. Luckily, the children go outside about 2:40 every day, so we stopped whatever we were finishing up, and got outside as fast as we could to catch some snowflakes and "play in the snow." (There were like 20 snowflakes... but still... it's the idea that counts!)
I have MANY books about snow and winter. It seems like winter is L-O-N-G, and we have lots of opportunities for read-alouds. Here are some of my favorites.
The Snowy Day is such a sweet book, and good for so many things. This story works great as a mentor text for small moments during my Narrative Writing Unit. I love how my kids are able to relate to Peter so well. Everyone notices right away when the snowball melts in Peter's pocket. It is as if they can each say, "Yep- that's what happens!"
We read this story a few weeks ago, and will revisit it this winter, I am sure. Next time we read this, we will play the sight word snowball game afterward. This time, we made snow with Q-tips. This activity is completely student directed and just plain easy and fun. I made and copied little Peter characters on red paper. The children cut these out and drew on his face and buttons. Then, they could experiment with chalk and paint with Q-tips to make their own snowy days. I taught them how I make snowflakes, and it was a very relaxing, quick little activity. Some kids had forts and blizzards. Some had a few flurries. We shared our pictures after we were done. It was fun to hear the explanations to go with the pictures.
Here is a description of Snow by Uri Shulevitz from Amazon: No one thinks one or two snowflakes will amount to anything. Not the man with the hat or the lady with the umbrella. Not even the television or the radio forecasters. But one boy and his dog have faith that the snow will amount to something spectacular, and when flakes start to swirl down on the city, they are also the only ones who know how to truly enjoy it.
On a random side note, this book reminds me of a couple sayings that I like:
Back to the snow books!
After we read some SNOW books, I love to let the children draw and write sight words in shaving cream snow. They have so much fun, the tables never look cleaner, and the room smells great. Win-win-win! You can also do this on trays to keep it more contained.
Disney Family Fun had this idea of painting snowflakes with pine needles!
Or make these cute Snowflakes from Frugal Family Fun.
Making Learning Fun shared the idea to use pasta or Honeycomb cereal for snowflake counters. I love it!
Snowball books are lots of fun, too!
My class thinks this one is hysterical! The snowball goes down the pants and starts them doing a snowball dance.
(Such sweet illustrations!)
Powdered sugar donut holes make great snowballs for a winter snack after you read a snowball story.
We play Snowball Sight Word Bingo or Snowball Number Bingo, using mini marshmallows as counters. You could use cotton balls, too- but for some strange reason, the kids like the marshmallows better. hmmm...
The Jacket I Wear in the Snow is great for a labeling lesson! I like to take a picture of each child dressed to go outside to play, and then have them write about what they are wearing- or at least label what they are wearing. We are doing this activity when we get back to school. I will post about it at my blog. The Night Before Kindergarten shared some writing activities that go well with The Jacket I Wear in the Snow- In the Snow and What I Wear in the Snow.
I love this Medial Sound Mitten Match by Imagine, Inspire, Innovate. This is what we will be working on when we get back after break, so it will be great to use with this story.
I made this little word family activity to go along with The Hat. Click on the picture if you would like a copy.
More books...
I LOVE Stella, Queen of the Snow. Her brother Sam has his usual many questions, and Stella always has an answer for him- right or wrong!
Ten on a Sled is great for retelling, acting, sequencing, and math word problems.
The Snowstorm Surprise and Ice-Cold Birthday are stories that my children loved to hear over and over when they were little, so they hold a special place in my heart. My middle daughter's birthday is in January, so when she was little we made Ice-Cold Birthday cakes for her sometimes. We layered ice cream sandwiches, hot fudge sauce, Coolwhip, crushed Oreos, then repeated with a different flavor of ice cream sandwiches and the rest of the goodies. YUM. You can use any kind of crushed candy instead or with the Oreos- depending on how much of a sugar overload you are going for...
Snow Sounds is a great introduction to onomatopoeia. From Amazon:
Sweep, crunch, swoosh, scrape . . . All night long, snow falls silently, bringing forth a world blanketed in white—and a very noisy day. It is also a fun story to read before you go outside for a winter sound walk.
For our Jack Frost activity, I let the children draw a winter picture with a white crayon on white paper, then they watercolor blue over it. So much fun!
The kids like to dance to this Eric Herman Snow Days song. It's silly.
We play a Snow Day Sight Word game that I just call SNOWSTORM! Everyone has a snowflake on a headband. I write a different sight word on each snowflake. (You could use math facts, ten frames, letters, numbers- anything!) Here are two different versions of the headbands.
Each child also has a clipboard with a recording sheet. I wrote before that since I don't have enough clipboards for everyone, I just put a big clip on the end of these old dry erase boards that I have, and they work great. If you want to get fancy, you can get some magic snowflake pencils at the Dollar Store.
When I say, "SNOWSTORM!" everyone starts walking around looking at each other's headband word and writing that word on their recording sheet. This is a simple and fun way to practice writing sight words. They kids have a ball.
Here is a copy of the recording sheet if you want to play! I always use the 3rd page one, but I made the others just for fun- so the game seems a little different if we play it again. :) Just click on the picture if you would like a copy!
Another fun game is like Mingle- but I call it Snowballs! Everyone walks around the room and is an individual snowflake. When I say "Snowball group of 4!" the children have to quickly get into a group of four. Then, I say "Snowflakes" again, and the walk around until I call out another "Snowball group of 3!" or whatever. They LOVE this game.
OK- some more books!
We LOVE Katy and the Big Snow just like we love Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel!
Thomas' Snowsuit is a fun story to read
These are some of my favorite books to teach about snowflakes and use for Science.
I love the sweet illustrations in Snowflake Bentley, and the children love that he was a real person!
I also love taking my class outside when it is snowing to do our snowflake observation lesson. I used to do this with my own children when they were little. It is always fascinating.
I put some black construction paper in the freezer and just get it from the staff room freezer on our way outside. You probably don't even have to freeze the paper. The kids get a kick out of it. Sometimes it seems like those extra little steps make a lesson more memorable for the children, and it may keep the flakes frozen a little better. I cut the paper in quarters so the pieces aren't that huge for the children to handle. You can use black felt or other fabric instead, or even dark mittens would work well to catch snowflakes. I found this picture online from The Chocolate Muffin Tree because we haven't done this lesson yet this year and I didn't have a picture.
Each child has a paper or fabric and a magnifying glass. They catch the snowflakes and observe the beauty. It is simple, and always one of our favorite outings. The children love learning that each snowflake has six sides and is unique! I have everything ready to go, and just pick the best afternoon to get outside when it is snowing, otherwise, it turns out like the day we were going to look at clouds after our cloud lesson- and the sky could not have been more perfectly blue!
I found some pictures online to show you some gorgeous snowflakes. It's fun to look at these with the children once you come inside.
SnowDays is one of my new favorite sites. It isn't a new sight- just new to me! It lets you create a snowflake online- without paper! (They come out MUCH better for me than the real paper ones... I actually feel a little artistic!)
Use your computer mouse as you would a pair of scissors to cut away sections of virtual paper to make beautiful virtual snowflakes!
Game Type:
Flash, Online Game
Game File Size:
11 KB (approx)
Game High Scores?
No
My brother-in-law made me these gorgeous snowflakes for two bulletin boards I made at school. My principal wants to put the snowflakes on a wall and spray paint them using the snowflakes as a sort of stencil.
The idea for this bulletin board came from The Butterfly Jungle. I loved it. Not only did the idea come from her- but so did the bear. I tried my unartistic best to draw my own, but they kept coming out like giant white rats, which are NOT as precious blowing snowflakes, by the way. Finally, I just enlarged her wonderful bear. She described drawing the bear as "easy-peasy." :( Nope.
I found a couple other fun online snowflake games.
Here are some very good snowflake videos. This first video from Activity Village, along with these facts.
Did you know that large snowflakes can measure up to 2" across and contain hundreds of individual crystals?
The largest snowflake ever found was 8" by 12"! It was reported to have fallen in Bratsk, Siberia in 1971.
This is a "How Snowflakes Form" video. It is more technical- but just in case you have some little scientists who wonder... I thought it was interesting, too!
Here's one more.
This video from Discovery is fun just to see the pictures!
This was just a sweet Snowflake Song video.
This is a sweet story to go along with a snowflake study. It's a great way to start a discussion about how people, like snowflakes, are each special and unique.
Glue snowflakes are always a beautiful craft to make- easy and never fail (remember- all snowflakes are supposed to be different!). They look so pretty in a window or even on a little "winter tree" if you want to go with The Tree that Stayed Up Until Next Christmas idea.
Factory Direct has a good tutorial about making glue snowflakes.
Martha Stewart gives directions for making snowflakes with pipe cleaners and borax at her site. This would be a fun experiment to do with the class so they could watch it "grow!"
Martha also shows how to makes some snowflake marshmallows at her site. They look so pretty in hot chocolate! Her process is pretty involved- so I tried freezing marshmallow fluff and making them that way just to see if I could cheat. Nope. The fluff was too sticky and didn't work. Martha knew what she was doing, of course.
If I made her snowflake marshmallows, I would put one in a bag for each child to take home with a packet of cocoa-and this "How do you stay warm?" homework to complete as they enjoy their cocoa. (Poor things- nothing comes without some work!:) Or you could just enjoy the cocoa after your outside adventures and share your experiences! I have the children draw and write inside the mug, about how they like to stay warm in winter. I have them color the top of the mug brown like cocoa is inside, and then glue on cotton balls for marshmallows.
Here is a sample:
Just click the picture below if you would like a copy of this simple little activity.
If you wanted to really celebrate a snowy day, you could make no-fail snowflake pancakes! These are easy- even I can make them. Again, since snowflakes are all different, you cannot fail! You can dress them up with powdered "snow," white chocolate chip snow, coconut (if kids like that) or a mountain of spray cool whip snow (my kids favorite when they were little still.) The easiest way I found to make these "designer pancakes" is to put the pancake mix in a large Ziplock baggie, cut off one corner, and make the snowflake design like you are decorating a cake by squeezing out the batter.
This picture is from Having Fun at Home. She worried about having symmetrical pancakes, bless her heart. Mine don't always look so great- but the kids LOVE them! Plus- once the powdered sugar or cool whip is on them, symmetry doesn't seem important at all.
With the "just add water" pancake mix, making pancakes in school is an easy way to cook in my classroom. One year for the 100th day of school, we made 100 mini pancakes. I just bring in my electric griddle, and we are good to go!
You can also make white chocolate snowflakes that are beautiful to add to a special cup of cocoa.
These are from Prudence Pennywise.
These are from Geek Sweets- and out of my league, but beautiful.
Although- Haniela's blog has a great tutorial about how to make these, so I may give it a try!
You could also put a pretty, intricate, paper snowflake on top of a cake to use as a template, and sprinkle powdered sugar over it for an easy snowflake cake. These are Martha Stewart's templates:
It will go great with our sparkly snow play dough. I like my Bisquick play dough recipe because it lasts so long and always turns out great! I just added some colorful glitter and no coloring. You could add some peppermint or vanilla extract for fun, too. The kids LOVE smelly play dough.
Bisquick Play Dough
2 cups Bisquick
1 cup salt
2 cups water
1 Tbsp cream of tartar
1 Tbsp oil
Mix all ingredients in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave for 3 minutes. Scrape and stir the bowl. Microwave for another 3 minutes. If it is not quite ready, microwave for another minute.
(I made a double batch and put it back in my microwave for one more minute, which worked perfectly.)
These are some other snow centers we have fun using. If you have a bigger tub or sand/water table, you could have a ball! I have a bigger bin that I use, but not a water table. I would LOVE to put real snow in a water table- or even a long bin. We don't have bathrooms or sinks in our classrooms, so that would be tricky. It's so much fun to do at home, though, if you have young children at home. Even putting some snow in the bathtub or sink with some snow toys would be so much fun.
Meanwhile, in my classroom, I use a bin or big box for my "snow sight words." Here are some snow ideas you can use, shown in large bowls.
The children dig through the snow to find sight words and record them on their Snowy Sight Word Sheet. I have ten words in each bin with more of the "snow" than I have shown in the pictures to cover up the words. The children rotate through the bins.
Pearls
(I had LOTS of these left from my daughter's wedding. They came is a big container from Walmart.)
Rice
(This is just showing the sight words hidden in the rice.)
Snow Storm! I used packing peanuts, cotton balls, plastic snowflakes I had, beans, and rice. This makes a really fun sensory table in a big tub or bin!
Cotton Balls
Plastic Snowflakes
Packing Peanuts
Beans
Beans are some of my favorites. I put them in the freezer before center time, and they stay really cold! Plus, I can write the words right on the beans. I actually have two sets, so I keep one with an ice pack in a freezer bag to switch in the middle of center time so the groups all get cold snow beans.
I just found this pack of snowflakes 75% off at Walmart! WOOHOO. I am going to write sight words on these snowflakes to use for my snowflake words.
Karen Stamp made this I Am "Snow" Smart activity as a December shoe-tying challenge. I love the idea! But since I missed using it for December, I am thinking the cute snowman could be used with cotton ball incentives for winter in general- and any skill that you want children to practice at home. We are having lots of shoe-tying practice requests for home because there just isn't enough time in the school day to practice that skill with the kids!
Here are some other fabulous TPT freebies that I found in my search for everything snow! Enjoy!
This Fun in the Snow packet by Penny Waddingham is a wonderful resource! She includes a sweet original winter story as well as math and literacy activities.
Kimberly Edgerton shared a Snow Fun Letter Match activity, great for reinforcing capital and lowercase letters and sounds.
Mrs. McKown made an adorable Sight Word Find magnifying glass activity. My kids will love this!
Warm Up With Winter Math is a fabulous packet from A Special Teacher for Special Kids with lots of great activities.
Teacher Tipster has a cute Count by 10's Snowflake Song.
I think that I am trying to rediscover the magic of snow each year through the eyes of the children. I do think the falling snow is beautiful- it is the ten inches that needs to be shoveled later this afternoon that isn't quite so beautiful. This is our backyard- (enhanced by Google!) Brrr! At least it was a very authentic day to write this post!
I always love the idea of this quote- until I realize that shoveling really isn't exactly a "choice..."
This is more of my idea of shoveling!
And always a favorite...
I would love you to stop over and visit my blog, Kindergarten: Holding Hands and Sticking Together. I have an equally obsessive post about all things snowmen - with completely different, wonderful snowman ideas, if you want to continue with the winter themes! You can click on the picture below to go to that post!
