All Things Snowmen

To be honest, that blog title was completely exaggerated. I am way too tired to delve into most things snowmen, let alone all things snowmen, but I am still here to talk about a few things snowmen.

So it's January, is everyone deep in some kind of snow, penguin, snowmen studying in the classroom? Do you have real like snow to go with these activities and lessons? If so, you're lucky (even if you don't agree with me!). Even though I live in Canada, where I live, we really only get a day or two a year with a dusting of snow - and that's during a cold winter. If we ever get more than that, well then lucky us, schools shut down and we get the elusive snow day!

Despite our lack of snow, we can still have fun with snowmen in January. I think some of the cutest art I've done with students lately has been winter/snowy/snowmen art. I have said it before and I will say it again - I am no artist, so I really like it when the students can look at my embarrassing artistic example and make something amazing.

This year, I tried some Van Gogh snowmen that I've seen floating around Pinterest. Of course I never have time to sit down at school, let alone whip out a camera, so I'll show the Pinterest image that inspired the art:

Via Jamestown Elementary Art Blog

We carefully traced the snowman with pencil on white card stock and then traced with a black pastel. We used white, blue, and for some adventurous students, pink pastel to draw the Van Gogh inspired wind, then painted with watercolors. They really turned out amazing and brightened up the hallway. Make sure to remind students to just use a wash in the background (bright blue looks the best), so the pastel wind can still be seen.

We also read some the of the Snowmen series by Caralyn Buehner - perfect for winter,

Via Amazon

The students loved looking for the hidden pictures, though I have to be honest, I'm still searching for some of them!

After reading, we talked about what snowmen could do at night. I think the most creative answer I heard was "drink milk from my fridge." Love those sweet answers! I then showed students the following pin and let them create their own artwork using pastel and black paper.

Via A Faithful Attempt

Ahh, SmartBoards - I love when I can show the kids a great example of art to inspire them! The students loved looking for the hidden images in the books so much that they decided to include their own hidden images - I do love when they are excited and inspired. It was interesting how a few hidden pictures ended up being white mice hidden in the white snowmen, no wonder we couldn't find them!

I haven't been stuck on snowmen though, I've also been thinking slightly ahead. I've uploaded a few more Word Problem a Day packets, including Valentine's Day (for 3rd and 4th) and Spring (for 3rd, still working on 4th). In addition, I've got some Winter Printables (Differentiated for 2nd) and a Valentine's Day Write the Room packet for Kindergarten. Click on any of the below pictures to check out the units if you're interested.

Now, I guess it's time to think about this upcoming week, I can't believe it's almost February!