Winter Theme: Counting Games, Story Stretchers & Fingerplays, Oh My!

When it comes to winter, I like to warm up with hearty one-pot recipes. So here's your winter-themed one-pot stop for some of my favorite DIY math materials, children's book extensions, and songs/finger-plays. Happy Learning, Happy Playing and Happy [almost] Wintertime!

 As seen in the photo above, Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day has been a favorite wintertime story of ours since my son's very first snowy day! I prepared and laminated these craft stick puppets to help tell the story. You can do some more extension activities by bringing the story into action outside with your own snowy walk! Try Peter's experiment out and bring a snowball indoors when you're done. You can observe what happens over time as it warms up and melts. Older children can also help to set up their own experiment and brainstorm ways to preserve their snowball. Try out one or a few different methods!

 This homemade math material was a big hit in my classrooms over the years. Young mathematicians can use one set of cards and one or more colors of pom poms (alternatively you can use buttons) to count and correspond the number of dots to the number of buttons down the front of the snowman. More advanced mathematicians can practice addition with two sets of cards and also experiment with A-B patterns in the process! It can be done independently, with a partner or with an adult. When the child has checked his/her math and is correct, she/he finds the corresponding hat with the matching sum and numeral and places it atop the snowman's head.

My son LOVES singing this and using the puppets! In larger groups, I have assigned five children each of the five snowmen and one child the sun as we act out the song.

You can do this action rhyme as a finger-play using your hand with all five fingers for penguins or make your own set of penguins to go along with it. Songs and rhymes like this are fun, catchy and also a great way to develop early mathematical concepts--particularly subtracting (as in Five Little Snowmen) and addition (as in the song above).

 Build a Snowman Game/Dress a Penguin Game

We LOVE this game! You can create a similar felt board set with movable parts or prepare parts out of paper for a collage version. Older artists may even like to draw their way through the game using a basic snowman shaped or penguin shaped template. To play the game you can either use a homemade die (these can be made from a recycled tissue box or you can even purchase dry erase dice at your local Dollar Tree) for players to roll, or cards with a set of parts and accessories to add to your snowman or penguin. Alternatively you could create a spinner with sections for each item. For the snowman I included items like a carrot nose, arms, boots, buttons, mittens, hat, scarf. If you're going to include more than 6 options (you wouldn't want to use the die method in this case) you could even include individual snowballs for his body! With the penguin I included accessories like a hat, mittens, boots, a bow tie, buttons, etc. This is a great game to teach turn taking and get super silly with. You can have some quite creative snowmen and penguins by the end of it!

Earlier this year I began introducing some early name recognition activities to my toddler. He did seem interested in playing with the magnets and alphabet rocks and tuned into the little song I made up about his name, but I felt that he perhaps wasn't quite at the level of actually recognizing his name yet, until... He totally wowed me and identified his name on an old Chanukah decoration and the letter M, which we have not yet learned together, on a monogrammed cup of mine as being one of his "special letters." So I decided to introduce some more name recognition and name-building activities into our themed play just for the fun and exposure of it. Here's a cute build-a-name-snowman activity we did this week. He needed assistance to put his letters in order (and vertical spelling is also visually different than actual left to right recognition), but he loved it so much and was so proud that he demanded to hang it up right away!

We've really grown to love journaling here. This is a simple setup of an Invitation to Create a Snowman. I've seen some far more detailed versions, which are great! There's a lot of room for creativity with provocations like this and also room to demonstrate recognition of visual closure skills (being able to complete a picture or image from memory). Early on, young learners may not necessarily have the visual processing skills--or fine motor skills for that matter--to "accurately" portray a snowman in collage form, with 2 eyes and a nose on his head, arms on the body, etc. This awareness and ability develops as they do! I was actually quite impressed with the results of this activity with my own little guy as it was the first time he's demonstrated this skill in development! That said, there is NOTHING wrong with a snowman who has a carrot on his belly or arms coming out of the top of his head!

Or a snowman who lost his buttons...my little guy kept retelling the story of Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons while he worked on this!