Engaging winter stations, hands-on classroom crafts, cozy reads, and a wintry mix of math skills all come together with these classroom snowman activities!
Winter is the perfect time to incorporate snow-themed fun into your math lessons. Using a theme students can relate to and that they love helps keep their attention during the competitive winter season when school breaks and holidays linger near.
There is no way students can resist math when they’re building a snowman, right? Plus, you can pick one of the best snowman books from my list below to complement a full day of snow much fun!
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Let’s kick off our snowman math with fractions! In this activity, students will build snowmen using circles that are divided into fractional parts. Each snowman’s body is composed of circles, with each circle representing a different fraction.
Students will practice identifying and labeling the fractional parts. The fraction snowman is a wonderful introductory activity for students working on fractions beyond the whole. This hands-on approach makes fractions more engaging and fun as students “build” their snowmen from fractions.
Let subtraction shine in this math snowman activity where students use snowmen to create and solve subtraction equations. Numbers are displayed on different parts of the snowman. Students will write a subtraction equation using the numbers provided and solve it.
You can make this more interactive by having students roll dice or pick cards to determine the numbers they’ll use in their equations. There is a blank set of snowmen in this free download just for that!
This activity combines the fun of snowman building with place value practice! Students will create snowmen using base ten blocks to represent different numbers. Each snowman is constructed with ones, tens, and hundreds blocks. After students create their snowmen, students will represent the number made in multiple ways. Student’s place value knowledge will be crystal clear after engaging in this hands-on snowman craft!
Help students practice telling time with this independent activity, a clock reading snowman challenge !
Each snowman has a clock on its bottom circle, and students must determine if the time shown on the clock matches the time written on the provided winter task card. If the time does not match, students must write the time that IS shown on the snowman.
This is the perfect activity for a winter math station!
In this snowy activity, students will practice graphing by voting on a simple winter question: “Have you ever built a snowman?” After casting their votes, the class will create a bar graph together to represent the results. Students can simply add a sticky note with their name on it to create a graph.
Once the graph is complete, students will answer questions about the data, such as “How many students have built a snowman?” or “How many more students have not built a snowman than those who have?” This snowman graphing activity is a great way to introduce or reinforce graphing skills while sparking a fun conversation about winter experiences!
All the fun of engaging in snowman activities wouldn’t be complete without the perfect complementary read! I love incorporating literacy into my math instruction. This list of my favorite snowman picture books offers a few wonderful options for furthering the snowman theme in the classroom!
You can find the complete list of books here. For even more snowman ideas, check out 5 other ways to use snowman activities in the classroom!
Hey, y’all! My name is Amy Lemons and I am passionate about providing students with both engaging and effective standards-based Math and ELA lessons.
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