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Friday, January 19, 2018

Building a Magical Snowman!



One of my favorite books to share with kindergarten in January is Snowmen All Year by Caralyn and Mark Buehner.  This fun and imaginative story explores what might happen if snowmen were able to last all year long.  They catch fireflies, visit the zoo, watch fireworks, and go swimming!  The illustrations are wonderfully cheerful and the students love listing to the rhyming text.




Before I begin reading the book I explain that the snowman in the story is magical and can even live indoors!  To set the stage for the story I tell them that we are going to build our own indoor snowman.  Of course Mr. Scanapieco won't let me bring snow inside so we'll have to use some magic of our own!

I ask the students what we'll need to build a snowman, and as they name each item I add each piece to the felt board: a hat, a scarf, arms, eyes, buttons, a mouth, and of course, snow!  (The snow is a couple cotton balls I've stretched out a bit.)  The students watch as all the pieces go into the "magic bag" and then I prompt them to name things that are cold. After all the students have a chance to share their ideas they stretch out their fingers and send their thoughts into the bag.  Watch the video to see the transformation revealed!


After we read the book I place the snowman back into the bag.  I have the students name things that are HOT and then we melt him!  I take all the individual pieces back out of the bag and place them back onto the board, and one observant student will point out that the snow is missing.  So it is, I'll confirm; it melted away!

As a follow-up activity I ask the students to draw pictures of what  they would like to do with a magical snowman.  It was a lot of fun to see so many beach pictures in the middle of January!


Visit https://buehnerbooks.com/ to learn more about the other books by this talented pair including three more stories about magically non-melting snowmen!