Winter Theme Unit

In our homeschool last week, we did a winter theme unit. The weather certainly cooperated in this as there was deep snow in the yard. No imagination about winter was needed!

The kids were able to get a lot of outdoor fun in including snowmobiling, making snowmen, digging, searching for animals by following their tracks, and just generally playing and having a great time!

Winter themed muffin tin lunch:

• banana snowman (three slices on a toothpick)
• snow (coconut)
• snowballs (mini marshmallow)
• pine tree (cucumber)
• snowman (sandwich with cucumber peel scarf, raisin buttons and face drawn with edible markers)
• candy hockey stick and puck (date)

Chalk snowman:

On blue construction paper, draw a snowman in chalk. Use your finger to smudge the chalk to even out the look.

Then put glue along the bottom of the picture and in snowflake shapes here and there. Sprinkle coconut over the picture. Glue on buttons. You can also use smaller buttons for the eyes. For the snowman’s mouth, use dried black beans.

Winter theme sensory bin:

For this sensory bin, I used cotton batting, the lid off a Christmas tin, a styrofoam ball, sequins (which the kids pretended were snow), foam trees and letters to spell out “winter”, penguins, pom poms, white spoons for scooping, marbles, and snowflake shapes from my cookie dough press. It was made entirely out of things I already had.

Good old fashioned snow flakes: 

My kids love making snow flakes and this week was no exception. They spent hours using just white paper and scissors to create shapes. Here is just one pile of their snowflakes. As Einstein reminded me, no two snowflakes are alike!

Painting on Snow:

I filled spray bottles with water and food colouring and let the kids paint on the snow. Before you do this with your kids, learn from my mistakes! There are two things I should have done differently:

1. I should have explained to the kids that the “paint” was for snow only, not for windows (grrr…)
2. I apparently should not have used bottles that had formerly contained cleaning products because my kids decided to taste the different colours (ugh!)

Snow Ice Cream Recipe:

Stir together:

• 8 cups of snow (be sure to tell your snow gatherers to avoid the yellow stuff!)
• one can of sweetened condensed milk
• half to one teaspoon of vanilla (do not add more)

This was so easy to make and it was a huge hit with the kids! (The Husband enjoyed a bowlful too!)

Hot Chocolate Sensory Craft:

When we made these, I made sure to take advantage of how sensory rich this activity was. I had the kids smell the hot chocolate mix and sugar and touch them before adding them. To make this craft, I printed off the sheets here. Then I had the kids colour the mugs, cut them out, cut out the marshmallows, add glue and sprinkle first with hot chocolate mix and then white sugar. After tapping the excess off, they glued some cotton batting to the top of the mug and glued the paper marshmallows on.

Printables and activity sheets:

Winter Fun Coloring from 1+1+1=1

Snow and Ice from 2 Teaching Mommies

Snowman Preschool Pack from Living Life Intentionally

Snow Day from Homeschool Creations

Snow Theme Word Sort from This Reading Mama

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.