One of the most popular snowmen and winter books has to be Snowmen at Night! We read Snowmen at Night each day for a different purpose, and the kids have a blast with the snowmen at night center activities!
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Snowmen at Night
On day one, we did a cold read. The students just sat back, listened, and enjoyed the book! After the book, each student shared what they would do if they were a snowman at night. I had a student draw the snowman for our chart.
On day two, we read the Snowmen at Night using story sequence cards. Before I began reading, I asked questions about what the snowmen did at night to hand out all the sequence cards. As I read, students placed the story sequence cards on the board. After I read, I numbered the event and discussed the events using ordinal numbers to squeeze some math in during circle time.
On day three, we listened to the rhyming words in Snowmen at Night. As I read, I would read the sentence and let the students fill in the rhyme. After the book, we made a list of all the words that rhymed with men and snow (both real words and nonsense words).
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On day four, we read the Snowmen at Night and pretended we were letter detectives looking for all the words that began with the letter S (like in snowman). As I read, I would stretch out the s sound so my younger students would hear the s sound at the beginning of the words. Students were so excited to hear a word that began with the letter s, they would shout out the word! I wrote the words on the chart as we found them in the book.
Snowmen Activities in Centers
Around the classroom, I like to put activities out to match the theme or books we are reading! Check out some of the snowman centers we did that were student favorites.
In my art center, I put out a tray of items students could use to build their own snowmen at night with playdoh to strengthen fine motor. In the tray were small sticks, buttons, small black rocks, carrot noses (cut from orange foam board), scarves (cut vinyl), and small hats. I made the hats by cutting squares and triangles out of foam board and hot gluing pom poms on top of them. Some students build 3-D snowmen by rolling the playdoh, and some build 2-D snowmen using cookie cutters. The snowman at the top is Olaf!
Students drew snowmen at night portraits on black paper using colored pencils. They worked so hard on them; I just had shown them off on the bulletin board outside our classroom. The snowmen are all unique and beautiful in their own way, just the students that made them.
To practice cutting circles, students cut and collaged snowmen. Students cut the white circles, added various size paper shapes, and drew with markers to create their snowman.
In the blocks center, I had students draw small snowmen on index cards. I taped them to unit blocks to create snowmen blocks. When students make and create items for their play, it gives them ownership, builds a sense of community, and builds their confidence. Then I placed them in the blocks center so they could act out and build parts of the book using the fun props! You can find the snowman positional word cards in the Snowman Math and Literacy Centers Unit HERE.
Check out more snowman-themed centers in THIS post!
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I’m Jackie, your go-to girl for early childhood inspiration and research-based curriculum.
