This week we talked about winter and how the weather had changed.  The cool mornings now require us to wear sweaters and jackets.  We read many books about places where it snows and the things that children do when playing outside in the snow.  We couldn't go sledding or make snow angels, but we did make our own snow for the sensory bin using science and some Insta-Snow powder.  This super absorbent polymer rapidly absorbs up to 100 times its weight in water, creating a fluffy snow-like material that cools as the water evaporates, making our sensory bin a favorite activity this week!

We watched a video of an Inuit family building an igloo out of super-packed snow, and we made our own igloos using inverted bowls and cotton balls.

We practiced rolling small, medium and large balls of playdough to create our own little snowpeople.  One of our stories was about a little boy who imagined what it would be like if his snowman never melted and could stay with him all year.  Then each child talked about what they would do with a snowman that stayed around all year.

In a science activity this week, we talked about the three states of matter (solid, liquid, and gas), which supported our theme of winter weather.  Learners at this age are most interested in experiences that they can interact with, so our little scientists had free range to touch, squirt, chop, pour, combine and wonder "What would happen if... ?"

One of our stories, The Snow Child, was reminiscent of the The Gingerbread Man, only in this story, it was a sweet little snow child who lived with an elderly couple.  She went away when the spring and summer weather was warm, and came back each year with the first snowfall.

A fun activity which helped to strengthen our fine motor skills was building snowmen in a jar.  We used oversized tweezers to pick up the cotton balls and deposit them into jars with snowman facial features on them.

We read Ezra Jack Keats' classic story The Snowy Day, and learned about all of the fun things that you can do in the snow.  In this story, Peter puts some snow in his pocket to show his mother, only to find that evening that his snowball has melted.

On the meadow we played with a stomp rocket and took turns running with a football.  Everyone bundled up to play on the preschool yard doing all of our favorite activities.  It was fun to play chase with all of our friends, and to give tricycle rides to each other.

We read the classic Ukrainian folktale The Mitten, in which a child drops a mitten in the snow, and it is soon inhabited by a host of woodland creatures.  Then we used cookie cutters to make prints on our own paper mittens.

We counted pieces of "snowman poop" using one-to-one correspondence.  Then we ate the pieces that we counted.  Luckily for us, they tasted just like miniature marshmallows!

We painted little wooden snowflakes and then dusted them with sparkly "snow."  We also matched snowman shapes to their outlines.