Our Wild Winter Week!

We have spent two wild weeks talking about "Winter" and the letters "S" & "W".  As some of you may know, my class and I are located in Central Alabama and winter here is . . . well. . . ummmm . . . usually just wet!  This year has been no exception.  We have had a lot of rain.  So, I tried to brighten things up with a few fun snowy activities!
One of the very first things we did was make the cutest Shape Snowman!  Everyone picked out their very own different shapes to use.
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It was so much fun watching everyone identify the different shapes!  I was reminded several times that "snowmen are round like a circle", and then they would pick out a square! 

We've made this next little snowflake for many, many years now.  Our craft stick snowflake.  The fun part of this craft comes when the children mix glue and white paint together.  Of course everyone has to touch it to see how sticky it is.  Next comes the real fun - you get to "dump" handfuls of Epsom salt all over your snowflake!  They actually have a little shimmer to them.

During the Christmas holidays I sent an e-mail to all my amazing teacher friends and asked them to save white wrapping boxes (the kind you get at the stores for clothes) and newspapers for me.  Of course my friends came through for me AGAIN!!!  I tapped the white boxes together with a little tape and . . . .

 

INSTANT FUN!  We now had the ability to build an ice fort!!  YES!  The boxes lasted about 2 weeks and then they started falling apart.  That was ok with us because by then we were moving on to something new.

 

Again, we don't really see snow in Alabama so we had our on snowball fight using newspapers!

  

For the past 4 years I have made our infamous "southern snowman" and for the last 4 years the great state of Alabama has brought home the National Championship trophy for college football (three for Alabama and one for Auburn).  Hmmm . . . I see a pattern!!!  Do you think the coaches should be giving me a percentage of their salaries????

Guess not!  Here is this year's official snowman -









And of course, here he is in his official "University of Alabama" gear!  To make things even better (could they be?) we were also studying the number 15 (as in this is the 15th National Championship for the University of Alabama).

Another fun activity we did to get our imagination going was to make a snowman/snowgirl with our palm prints. 

 

I love this activity because the children's imaginations really get a good work-out.  Besides picking out their favorite scarf, hat and buttons, the children decide on their own names for their snowman/snowgirl.  I always love seeing the different amounts of snow the children put on their creations.  By the way, the snowman on the left is in a "windy snowstorm"! 

 

Since last year's class had so much for with our "sticky box", I had to make another one this year.  (You can find the details of our sticky box here Sticky Box)  I changed things up a little and let the children used some old foam letters we had laying around. 









 

Everyone loved finding the letters of their names and their favorite colors!  It was such a big hit we are sharing it with our friends in the four-year old classes!

 

We talked about the letter "S" a lot during our Winter Week and we decided that our favorite "S" word was "SNOWMAN/SNOWGIRL".  We ended up our discussion about the letter "S" by making a "s"illy "s"nowman/"s"nowgirl out of toilet paper rolls.

 

 

I love the faces!!!!

 

We got a little "wacky" during our "W" week and painted with worms!  Don't worry, we didn't use real worms, we used some of my Dad's old plastic fishing worms that I brought home from the lake! I have a funny feeling he would love knowing how we used them because WOW, we had fun!



 

 

 

The end results were "w"onderful!



We had a HUGE surprise on Thursday, January 17, 2013 in Alabama . . . . we had SNOW!  Yes, real snow.  Do you know what happens in Alabama when it snows?????  We all leave our classrooms and go look at it! 

 









 

Yes, snow is THAT rare in Alabama.  Moments are this picture was taken we decided that we could not wait another second!  We went back to our classroom, got our jackets and headed out into the wintry mess.  OH THE JOY! 

 

Thank you for visiting with us I hope you COME BACK SOON!