Fun Winter Books

A wordless book, The Snowman is excellent for working on interpretation and language development.  Have the child look at the pics and tell what they think is happening.  Prompt them to notice details in the pictures and assist them in processing the clues to arrive at a logical narrative.  This is a great activity for developing narratives, working on verbal expression skills, and improving grammar and written language. This task is also excellent for the child with weak processing or pragmatic language skills.  Social skills weaknesses can be addressed by discussing how the characters may be feeling, why they feel this way, and how we come to those conclusions based on what we see or know. See Snowman Art ideas at Deep Space Sparkle.

The Mitten is a classic story about a lost glove and the forest animals who find shelter there.  This story lends itself to sequencing tasks and story retelling.  There is also lots of advanced vocabulary to be learned in this version of the story.  Jan Brett's website includes many freebies such as story masks, mitten patterns (which I like to hole punch for the kids to lace together), story characters (which we print and place into the laced mittens when retelling the story or sequencing), and other items.  The mitten lacing is a fun activity and the kids can even earn items such as sequins, buttons, and stickers for decorating their mittens.  You can add all types of activities depending on your goals:  matching mittens (real one, wallpaper/scapbook paper cutouts, or pencil paper tasks with worksheets), learning about the different kinds of animals, or creating your own story based on another article of clothing.  The Hat is an example of expanding an idea from one story to another.

Snowballs by Lois Ehlert is about making Snow People from lots of items such as scraps of ribbon, toys, and natural items.  It is a great book to read and then make your own Snow People.  Paper plate snowmen are easy to make and you can find items similar to those in the book for decorating the plates.  I like to supply the children with yarn, buttons, pipe cleaners, and an assortment of items.  Or, you can take them  on a nature walk to find items to add to their snowman such as acorns, sticks, leaves, etc. There are all kinds of 3-D snowmen to be made.  One of the cutest ideas is to take empty water or soda bottles and cover them with cotton balls and then add the decorations.  Other ideas include air dry clay, floam, styrofoam balls, and edible snowmen made of marshmallows, rice cakes, etc.   See more ideas in my post Let It Snow.  Deep Space Sparkle is a fun art blog with lots of cute ideas for snowmen pictures.

Snow is the story of a boy in the city who anticipates snow even when the rest of the town people say it is not going to snow.  This would be a good book to springboard to a snowglobe project. 

The Snowy Day is the quintessential book about snow activities.  The boy ventures out and engages in all of the classic snow play activities.  He also discovers that his snowball melts when he tries to stuff one into his pocket and take it home. Here is a cute YouTube link that retells the story with live action.  There are also some nice resources for retelling here.

Lapbook idea from 3G=Growing Godly Girls


Update 1-25-14: here is another great resource from The Budget SLP. Here are my favorites from her resource list:

• We Give Books:  Read the book online; free
• Animated book at Ezra Jack Keats webpage
• Printables at Homeschool Creations: Basic skills like tracing, counting, also a winter clothing sort.
• Homeschoolshare.com lapbook

With the pretty snowflakes on the cover, this book might go well with making paper snowflakes. Here is a site with advanced designs for snowflakes (for older kids).







More Winter Favorites.