Creating a Winter Scene

We have been discussing our many adventures out in the snow recently! The children have shared that they have gone sledding, made snowmen, and made snowballs. As a way to represent all of our experiences, we decided to create our own snow scene. We incorporated cutting skills and problem solving into this creative experience by giving the children various snowman puzzles to cut out and then put back together. These first puzzles were simple and had one straight line to cut. We will progress to more difficuult puzzles as the year goes on. After the children cut a few puzzles out, they moved to a large piece of white paper to put them back together and begin to create our snow scene. 

We witnessed so much teamwork and collaboration as they figured out how to put the puzzles back together and where to place them on the large sheet! Friends helped each other with the task of matching the pieces and placing them down to glue. Throughout this experience they discussed the characteristics of their snowmen (why they matched) and why they placed them as they did on the paper. It was quite a fun and interactive experience to witness!

The next day we revisited our snow scene and talked about what we had created. Then we looked through a few books about winter and discussed what else we saw besides snowmen outside on a wintry day. We used both children's books and informational texts so that the children could see story scenes and real life pictures and objects. The children identified snowflakes, piles of snow and trees and rocks that have snow on them. We then moved to our winter scene to add snow and snowflakes. The children could manipulate and glue the materials (cotton balls and different sizes and colors of snowflake stickers) in any way that they visualized, and they were encouraged to verbally share what they were creating. Our winter scene became a masterpiece of snow, snowballs, snowmen and snow mountains! Some children even combined the materials and added the stickers to the top of the cotton balls to represent the snowflakes on top of the snow. Finally we added glitter glue for a different fine motor and creative experience. The children added colors to their creations and made brightly-colored snowflakes and snow creations. 

One final step in our winter scene creation was to make sure that everyone knew who created the art! We told the children that artists always label their work, so we needed to find a way to get their names on the paper. Each child was then given their letter bin which had crumbled up "snowflakes" in them. They had to unfold the paper and discover what was written on them. As they unfolded the paper (great fine motor work manipulating and unfolding the paper) they began to call out letters and eventually we heard "it's my name!" Each snowball had a letter in their name. The children spelled out their name on the scene and then glued it down. This was a fun and exciting way to discover the letters and label our work!

Both days of work on our winter scene let the children be creative and use some really fun art materials. Intertwined in this creative and open-ended work was constant fine motor work, hand-eye coordination, and visual-spatial awareness practice. By giving them materials but not specific steps to follow to use them, we could see their natural motor and cognitive skills at work.