Snowmen!

This week we also talked about snowmen. I find that like snowflakes, snowmen are a wonderful way to teach children about individuality. Snowmen are also perfect for teaching children about geometric shapes; there are soooo many different shapes that go into making a snowman! One of the projects we did was make a 'shapes snowman'. The children were each given 3 white circles of different sizes, a piece of construction paper in their choice of color, geometric shapes, and a glue stick. From there they were encouraged to put their snowman together however they wished! It was really fun to see the different ways that children used the shapes to make their individual snowman. To go along with this project we read the book 'All You Need for a Snowman'. This is a fantastic book which takes you through all the steps of making a snowman! We also sang a song about dressing a snowman that the kids loved!
Another snowman project we did was painting a snowman with cotton balls. I traced 3 circles onto construction paper. The children then painted in the circle using the cotton balls and white paint. The younger children smeared the paint around staying in the circle remarkably well. Some of the older children 'dotted' the cotton ball onto the paper which gave the snowmen more of a textured look! The children then added google eyes, orange triangle noses, and other items that they wanted to 'dress' their snowman. They all turned out really neat and are on display in our classroom. To go with this project, we read the book 'The Biggest Snowman Ever!'  The song we sang to go along with this was an action song about rolling snowballs bigger and bigger to make a HUMONGUOUS snowman!
The last snowman project we did was to make a snowman chain. This was more of a fine motor project as it required the children to make paper chains. The kids did a great job helping each other which was the point of the project! We make a chain out of white paper that had 3 links. On the first link the children glued eyes, nose and mouth. The second line was left empty and on the third link, the children glued buttons. After these dried, we hung them on the ceiling where they look very nice! To go along with this we read 'Snow Friends' and sang 5 Little Snowmen!
To go along with our snowmen theme, I added a snowman tangram printable from http://www.prekinders.com/ In our sensory box I put a bunch of cotton balls and added pretend people. The kids loved making the people play in the snow! In the dramatic play center I removed the Christmas items *sniff* and added snowmen cookie cutters and a snowman cooking apron. We had a wonderful, fun filled week even though we didn't get to play in the snow!