Kicking off the second semester can be loads of fun! It typically hits right in the middle of winter and it’s the perfect time to pull out your favorite winter-themed activities. If you’re like most teachers, you want winter activities that aren’t just fun but provide real value and learning opportunities for your elementary students. One of my favorite ways to incorporate them both is with snowman activities for kids!
The snowman is the unofficial symbol of winter…in my humble opinion…and students just can’t get enough! And if you live in a state where snow is a rarity like me (gotta love Texas!), then having a little fun with snowman crafts, printables, differentiated math activities, and more, is just perfect for feeling like you’re still getting your part of the winter season.
Here are five of my favorite snowman activities for SNOW much (standards-based!) fun in the classroom this season plus grab the FREEBIE below!
The book Sneezy the Snowman has become wildly popular among the teaching community! Sneezy steals the show with his hilarious attempts at keeping warm. Needless to say, it was a total meltdown, Ha!
But the book is perfect for winter in the classroom because not only will your students really enjoy the story but you can incorporate engaging reading activities for story structure, cause and effect, and repetition.
For our Rooted in Reading unit, we include all of that plus nonfiction activities to help students understand the differences in temperatures across the country.
(Affiliate link has been used above, but I only share things I truly love!)
Snow is one of the best winter weather sights! It works perfectly for incorporating nonfiction elements on weather & its effect, and you can definitely throw in a few stem lessons, too!
When you want a theme for your winter reading lesson plans, the snowman is the way to go.
{You can learn more about Sneezy the Snowman Rooted in Reading activities HERE.}
This hands-on math activity doubles as a snowman craft! I am a sucker for a good craftivity but this one goes beyond that.
With the Solve to Create a Snowman activity, students will get a chance to practice their word problem-solving skills in an engaging way. To play along, students will be given task cards with a word problem to solve.
Each word problem they solve earns them a piece of the snow buddy. Once they get them all correct and collect all the pieces, they can craft their snowman.
Later, you can use them for your bulletin board display!
{You can learn more about Solve to Create a Snowman right HERE.}
I love to get creative when it comes to practicing identifying shapes and their attributes. I mean a shape… is a shape… is a shape, so these lessons can get repetitive fast! And the last thing we need are students who are bored. (Amiright?!)
So, instead, I like to focus on what they are using their shapes to create! Try to think outside of the box so they feel excited about what they are building.
A shape snowman craft like this one is the perfect opportunity for students to play around with various shapes, even ones you wouldn’t immediately think to use when building a snowman.
We managed to use trapezoids, rectangles, circles, octagons, squares, triangles, hexagons, rhombi, and parallelograms! You probably couldn’t imagine how all of those shapes can create a snowman at first glance, but that’s what makes it an engaging task for students.
And since we want to make sure they know their shapes, there is a recording sheet in different variations to outline the attributes of each shape.
Bonus: You can use the finished crafts as decor for your classroom!
{You can learn more about the Shape Snowman HERE.}
The Place Value Snowman is another 2-for-1 activity for students to showcase or practice their math skills while getting crafty. In the end, they’ll have something to show for their work and they double as manipulatives.
With the Place Value Snowman activity, students will be using the pieces of a snowman for their tens, ones, and hundreds!
They will use the pieces to model their numbers and record the numbers in several different ways including expanded form, number words, adding and subtracting by 10 or 100, and more.
We want to ensure these units provide opportunities for differentiated instruction, so we include several versions of the recording sheet plus a digital version!
As a bonus, students can build their snowman using the number blocks and they can challenge themselves to build their snowman using only the pieces for a certain number.
{You can learn more about Place Value Snowman HERE.}
Sometimes you do want to have a little fun in the classroom and directed drawings are a great way to do that! But they aren’t just for fun.
Directed drawings can be a beneficial part of your lesson when you use them in the right way. One of my favorites is to use them as part of a writing lesson.
In the winter, students can draw a snowman and write their own snowman story. Using the snowman drawing and writing activity, students can practice writing narratives, paragraphs, or fiction pieces. Even a cute winter poem would work perfectly!
The options are endless for using this snowman directed drawing. And if you need more ideas about how to incorporate it into your lesson plans, check out THIS post.
You can grab this snowman drawing for FREE below!
{Looking for more seasonal directed drawings with writing templates? Check out the winter pack HERE.}
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.
Sample a day of Rooted in Reading with these lesson plans and activities for Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, and Grammar!
