Please send in snow clothes for our outdoor playtime! Boots, snow pants, gloves, mittens, hats, and warm jackets! We learn many new skills playing in the snow!
SKILLS TAUGHT
Thinking Skills – Measuring, comparing, and observing snow can help children increase their general thinking skills.
Coordination Skills – Snow time is a great time for children to practice coordination skills by throwing, marching, putting on and taking off clothes, etc.
Art Skills – Building castles, dressing up snowmen, and making snow designs, all give children opportunities to be creative. Cutting out snowflakes is great for improving your cutting skills.
Math Skills – Counting snow prints, and snowballs, stacking three snowballs together, and stacking snowballs by size are wonderful concrete examples of math concepts to help your child gain important math skills.
Music Skills – Snow time is a wonderful time to sing whether you’re playing outside or stuck indoors.
Language Skills – Snow time allows children concrete examples for using such words as; icy, slippery, crunchy, hot, and cold. Snow can also be used as a medium for writing out letters or words. Look for snowy day books at your library to read to your child.
Science Skills – The world changes when it is covered with snow. Help your children discover and experience ice, ice cycles, snow drifts, snowflakes, signs of winter, and winter animals, and observe how plants and trees are different in the snow.
Concept Skills – Numbers, colors, shapes, and sizes can all be found on a snowy day. Help your child discover them.
MAXIMIZING TEACHING MOMENTS
You can maximize teaching moments by adding music to your activities. As children engage in outdoor snow activities, encourage them to sing about what is happening. Show your children how they can take the tune of any familiar song and add new words.
Example: They know the song “Jingle Bells” and they are rolling snowballs. Start singing about what they are doing to the tune of “Jingle Bells”. Such as –
Rolling snowballs,
Rolling snowballs,
This is lots of fun.
I’ll just roll a few more balls
Then I will be done!
Or
Crunch, crunch, crunch
Crunch, crunch, crunch
Marching ‘round the yard,
When there’s snow on the ground
Walking’s kind of hard!
Showing children how to create their own music to accompany their activities gives them a new creative way of expressing themselves. Singing about current activities also makes music meaningful to young children. Singing can increase memory and therefore increase general knowledge.
FUN SNOW ACTIVITIES
ROLLING AND THROWING
Children naturally love to roll the snow into large balls and throw smaller snowballs. Encourage rolling and throwing. Both of these activities help your child develop coordination skills. Instead of throwing balls at people, help your child set up a row of plastic bottles to knock over or a tire to throw through.
SNOW TRACKS
As children march around in the snow, they will notice that they leave tracks. Encourage your child to make circular tracks, box tracks, x tracks, etc. Learning about beginning shapes will never be more fun!
SNOW ANGELS
Most of us remember making snow angels as a child. It is an easy no-lose kind of activity that is great for preschool children. Children simply lie down in the snow, spread out their arms, and move them up and down. An impression of their body and lovely angel wings appear when the child stands up to observe.
SNOW PAINTING
Fill one or two spray bottles with water and add a few drops of a different food coloring to each bottle. Let your child take the bottles outside and spray designs on the snow. These spray bottles can also be used to spray snow sculptures.
SNOW CASTLES
Children can have fun designing and building snow castles just like they build sand castles. Provide them with small buckets and show them how to fill the buckets with snow. Then show them how to turn the bucket upside-down, then pull the bucket up to dislodge the snow. These tower shapes can be made in a circle to create a castle.
TIP – A little vegetable spray, sprayed in the bucket can help the towers come out easier. Other containers can also be used to create interesting sculptures.
COUNTING AND STACKING SNOWBALLS
When your child is in the mood to make snowballs, encourage her to make a stack and then count them before she uses them in some other way. Also, whenever you and your child engage in stacking up snowballs to make a snowman or whatever, be sure to always have your child count how many snowballs have been stacked.
LETTERS IN THE SNOW
Help your child write his name in the snow or encourage him to make as many letters as he can by walking or writing with a stick in the snow.
WINTER WORDS
Outside or inside on a cold winter day, is a good time to mention winter words to your child. Help her increase her understanding of these words as well as increase her overall vocabulary. Bring into the conversation, such words as icy, slippery, hot, cold, freezing, etc.
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