we made snow globes

Because, you know.....sunny California.

This week we read the book Snow by Uri Shulevitz, we talked about weather, temperature, snow, ice, seasons, winter, and more. There were pompom snowballs to explore, glittery orbs to discover, a mirror box to explore symmetry, and books with photos of snowflakes. We made faux snow aka clean mud, tape resist snowflakes, wintery colored paintings, and these happy snowglobes.

The children brought in jars, poured the water, added the glitter (and discovered that too much sparkle made it difficult to see their happy snow globe selves), and selected their decorations. I took the photos the week before, and manned the glue gun the day of. They really loved looking at them and sharing them with their friends and family. Idea came from Our Best Bites blog. Ya gotta love folks who share, thank you!

pom pom snowballs

I made a batch of pom-pom snowballs just for the fun of it. The children were able to safely have a snowball fight and practice catching and throwing. We also played hide and seek with them and used them as props for a song which was and still is a total hit. When we sing it, each child gets an opportunity to pick a body part for where their snow falls. We then see if we can balance our snowball or beanbag on that body part. Pom-poms are really easy to make, you can use a maker here, your hand, or cardboard.

snowflakes a plenty

 

A wee bit of fun on the art table during our week of Snow. Snowflake punches, cupcake liners, stickers, and stamps. Oh the flurry of art that was created at this table!

making painter's tape snowflakes

For our week of Snow, one of our projects was making painter's tape snowflakes. I pre-ripped lengths of painters tape for the children to place on their paper after talking about symmetry and snowflakes. We used a sturdy paper for the project and the children enjoyed placing their tape down in a snowflake pattern. We also had strips of paint on the side of the easel if they wished to do more tape resist paintings. Many of the children did and for those they preferred to keep the tape on their paper as they painted only on top of their tape placement. It was really nifty and I wish I had photos of those...I totally forgot!

I added some clear glitter to our finger paints for the children to use. The finger paints were also out for the duration of the day. Most of the children preferred using a paint brush and so they did.

I encouraged them through dialogue to paint over as much of the paper as they could. The painting began with gorgeous colors that slowly got swirled over and over and over again until they met in the middle and became brown. Isn't that usually the case?

We also did another snowflake using watercolor paper and liquid watercolors. We talked about a warm palette and a cool palette and looked at our book for inspiration.

After the paint had mostly dried, we removed the tape, the children loved this part! So happy and sparkly and sadly I only have this photo of two snowflakes and well...the one on the left there is mine. When we sit down to do a led activity such as guided drawing or this snowflake project, I often will ask them to show me how to create lines and shapes etc. I completely believe that children should be allowed to follow their art to wherever it takes them and that sample art is not in their best interest so I never have one to show them ahead of time. I do however do the project along with them if I have not done it before so that I have a sample for my files. Otherwise they are free to create to their art's content which is a delightfully messy and glorious experience!

making play dough in the classroom

 I often forget to make new play dough for the classroom but luckily we have a cabinet with all the ingredients we need and a microwave for heating up water to pull it all together. Often we will mix away with no recipe other than each child who is present getting to add a scoop or two of each ingredient at hand. As we work on our recipe I use vocabulary to enhance the process and now each child clamors to be the one who gets to level it off, or knead the dough.

 We use flour, salt, oil, cornstarch and water in our dough. If I remember to bring in cream of tartar we add that as a preservative but otherwise hte cornstarch adds a nice smooth feel to the happy mess.

 This batch here was for a week of faux snow play and so while it did not have any color added, it did need a glitter boost. Everyone loves a turn shaking glitter into the mix.

 I need to find a big mixing bowl for the classroom. I keep an eye out at the thrifts but until then we use whatever we have on hand. Sometimes a bucket, other times this aluminum tray. We began with a bouquet of wooden spoons but many of them seem to have gone into hiding. I need to find more of those as well.

 The children love making their own play dough and will often play with it more than usual when they have had a hand in the making. The sparkles in this batch made the dough all shimmery while the cornstarch made it smooth and pliable. This snowman was the first thing that got made that morning.

 To add to the play there were small clear, blue,  and white flat backed jewels; glittery styrofoam balls,snowflake shaped cookie cutters, and a handful of classroom made stamps.

We made the stamps from a pack of sticky-backed foam snowflakes and a handful of our play blocks. Later, our large foam snowflake stampers made an appearance and were a complete hit!