What Can You Do with A Snowy Day?

The title of this post is an intentional play on words. Although, in part, this is a post about what to do with a snow day, it’s also about what to do with the book, The Snowy Day. These activities all cluster together to form a unit study, or learning opportunities that spring from the book and the topic of snow in general.

The appropriate age ranges for these activities vary, making it an ideal selection of activities to enjoy with a group of children across a spectrum of ages — perhaps as a family study over winter/Christmas break in a homeschooling household. The youngest activities are probably best suited for about 1st or 2nd grade, most will reasonably engage kids in elementary and middle school, and a few activities are good extensions for older students.

The Snowy Day

By Ezra Jack Keats (“Aderadack Keats,” as my oldest called him when she was young), this picture book is a Caldecott Medal winner and a children’s classic. The target age range for this book is pretty young — preschool to kindergarten — and you might get eye rolls if you’re reading it with only older kids. But the older ones probably won’t mind reading along with the littles, and if they enjoyed it when they were smaller, they might appreciate it for nostalgia’s sake.

The story follows Peter, a little boy probably from Brooklyn, and his outdoor adventures on a snowy day. As simple as it is, it offers ample opportunities for concepts to talk about:

snow (of course) — what it is, that it’s wet, that it melts when it’s warm, etc.
cause and effect (What happens when Peter hits the tree?)
for non-city dwellers, the concept of apartments (How does Peter have an “across-the-hall” neighbor?)
how stoplights work (and what is up with the jumbled-looking colors of the ones on the cover? Possibly a print quality issue.)
being too little to do what the bigger kids are doing
onomatopoeia (“crunch, crunch”)
dressing aptly for the weather
emotions (Peter was sad when he realized his snowball was gone.)

Any story can be used to practice predicting the outcome, but the clear cause and effect between hitting the tree and snow falling, and between putting a snowball in your pocket and taking it inside, present particularly fitting opportunities to pause and ask, “What do you think will happen when…?”

We have a bilingual version, which allows us to put foreign language into the mix, too.

More Snowy Literature

To continue in the literary vein, you can also read some more storybooks about winter and snow. There are a plethora of children’s picture books, like White Snow, Bright Snow and The Mitten, and I encourage you to choose from among whatever your library stocks.

For older kids, classic chapter books include The Sign of the Beaver, The Long Winter, Little House in the Big Woods (which includes a description of maple candy) and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, among others.

We also found a fun book at our library called Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold. The poems in this are varied in style, and span a variety of creatures of the natural world (both animals and plants). The illustrations are beautiful. And each poem is accompanied by a small bit of non-fiction teaching something about the creature the poem is about. It also has a colorful, easy-to-read glossary.

Need more poetry? Look for classics like Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Robert Frost), In the Bleak Midwinter (Christina Rossetti), It Sifts from Leaden Sieves (Emily Dickinson). (And consider writing your own!)

The Snowy Day White Snow, Bright Snow The Mitten The Sign of the Beaver The Long Winter (Little House)Little House in the Big Woods The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold

Snowflake Photography

The first person to perfect the techniques necessary for photographing snowflakes (which are hard to see and melt quickly) was a man named Wilson Bentley, otherwise known as “Snowflake Bentley.” You can read about his life in the picture book of the same name.

You don’t have to get a book to read about him, though. He donated his photographs to the Smithsonian Institute for preservation, and they have their own mini-biography of him online. You can see the images in their image gallery, as well (or find them in a book, if you prefer).

Another interesting online biography of Wilson Bentley is the one by Keith C. Heidorn at Public Domain Review. Besides the primary discussion of Bentley’s snowflake photography, there’s also some discussion of Bentley’s other weather experimentation — which might be a useful segue into other weather experimentation of your own!

The Science of Snow (Reading)

Before we (mostly) leave the topic of books (I have one more to share in a bit), let’s talk about the science of snow. We’ve looked at literature about snow — stories and poems — and a biography, but what about non-fiction discussing the snow itself?

As is the case with picture books, you can just use whatever your library has available. Ours had a lot of options to choose from! I’m pretty happy with the ones we ended up with, though, so I’ll show you what we got in case you’re still trying to narrow it down or you’re buying your own.

Snow (Our Wonderful Weather)The Secret Life of a Snowflake The Snowflake

The first book we got is simply called snow (yes, in all lowercase). By Valerie Bodden, this is a general-purpose introduction to snow, clearly designed for very early readers. It talks about snow as weather, discusses snowflakes, and addresses the impact of snow on people. There’s a simple science experiment (let ice melt, then evaporate, to see water in all its forms) and a very brief glossary. One page does reference people dying in blizzards, so if your kids are sensitive, you’ll want to make note of that.

The second book is called The Secret Life of a Snowflake. The author — and photographer — is Kenneth Libbrecht. Like Snowflake Bentley, he makes a living photographing snowflakes — although he has much more advanced equipment than Bentley did! This book contains gorgeous photographs of snow crystals, along with elementary-level explanations of the water cycle, how snowflakes form, why snow is white, and why the crystals are the shape they are.

The third book is essentially an adult-level expansion of The Secret Life of a Snowflake. Also by Kenneth Libbrecht, The Snowflake contains even more amazing photography (by Patricia Rasmussen), and in-depth explanations of the formation of snow crystals and their variations. Younger students will find the text over their heads, but will still enjoy flipping through to look at the pictures. High school students and science-minded middle schoolers may enjoy the content (especially if they’ve already read Libbrecht’s other book).

These three books build on each other quite nicely.

The Science of Snow (Doing)

$refracted light$

The obvious scientific themes found in snow are states of matter, weather, crystals, and light refraction. All four are touched on in the books above. Any or all of them are good avenues for exploration, over a variety of age levels. Of course, the extent of your exploration will vary with the age and experience of the children. Some potential activities might include…

States of Matter:

Talk about states of matter. (For the littlest ones, this might just be what they are. With older kids, it can include why they are.)
Brainstorm lists of solids, liquids, and gases.
Do the simple experiment found in snow, using ice.
Use Montessori-style groupings of materials to tangibly introduce the various types of matter.
Encourage the kids to create their own groupings of items by state.
Glue pompoms* onto preprinted or -drawn circles to illustrate the tightly- or loosely-packed molecules. (Or onto fun shapes, like these.)
If you have a large enough group of people, use yourselves to practice being tightly-packed or loosely-packed molecules. (Thanks to a commenter here for the idea. This one doubles as physical activity!)
Use water beads in pint or quart jars, or pony beads in baby food jars, to demonstrate how loosely-packed molecules move more freely.

*You can glue on whatever you want. I’ve seen people use dry cereal, pony beads, etc. I’ve found that small (1/2″ or 1/4″) pompoms are easy to handle and adhere well with glue because they aren’t slippery.

A bit of a crossover between categories would be comparing how quickly ice melts and how quickly snow melts.

Weather:

Talk about weather, and the difference between weather and climate.
Discuss the water cycle.
The above experiment with the ice leads into a discussion of the water cycle, but you can illustrate the water cycle more clearly with a condensation experiment in a plastic bag.
Make water cycle bracelets with pony beads and/or learn and sing a water cycle song.
Track the weather for a week or a month. You can go simple and just make notations on a calendar, or go fancy, like this.
If your kids are old enough, take tracking a step farther and make predictions about the weather.
Make your own weather instruments.
Make (and use) a cloud viewer. (alt. option)
Learn about how different types of clouds form at different altitudes.
Use cotton balls stretched into various shapes to create your own paper model of cloud types.
Read about types of winter precipitation and how they form. (Hail is missing from the previous link.)

Light Refraction:

Talk about how light and colors work. (This page is helpful, ‘though not for the youngest students, but does allude to evolution.)
If you have a prism, show how it refracts the light.
Look around your house to see if you have anything else that refracts light. (We discover random “rainbows” as a result of windows, drinking glasses, etc. that end up in the right places at the right times.)
Take a step closer to snowflakes and refract light with water in this simple experiment.
You’ve separated colors; now “recombine” them with a spinning color wheel.

Crystals:

Talk or read about what crystals are. (Also here and here.)
“Grow” borax crystals.
Crystallize epsom salt on wintry paintings, or grow epsom salt crystals on another surface. (Have leftovers? Make these suncatchers.)
Make rock candy (sugar crystals).
For older students, here’s a list of common chemicals that produce crystals. (Some are safe to work with, with younger children, while others might not be.)
Grow crystals from more than one of the substances above, and compare the crystals.
Choose a single substance above and grow the crystals multiple times, changing the temperature each time to see how that affects the crystal formation.

If you don’t have anything else you want to grow crystals on, bits of untreated sponges work well.

Snowy Math

The science of snow — especially crystallization — flows right into the math of snow. Snow crystals provide opportunities for talking about a variety of math concepts, at a variety of levels.

Snowflakes are six-sided. For the youngest children, simply counting might be all the relevant math you need. Look at pictures of snowflakes and count the sides.

Depending on the particular designs of individual snowflakes, some might seem to have twelve sides. This is because each “side” may have multiple projections. This is a good opportunity for talking about multiples of six. (Perhaps the 6 multiplication table?)

Hexagons are, of course, the foundational shape of snowflakes. You can talk about shapes in general, polygons more specifically, and most specifically, hexagons. If you’re talking about the less “ordinary” snowflakes, you can also talk about columnar snowflakes and how those are hexagonal prisms.

Going a step further, you can talk about perimeter, area, and volume, especially as pertains to hexagons and hexagonal prisms.

Snowflakes display both standard reflective symmetry, and symmetry around a point (rotational symmetry).

Older students might also enjoy diving into the concept of fractals.

Snow Art

And just as the science of snow flows into the math, so the math of snow flows into the art. Hexagons and symmetry are useful concepts for building art around. (Some of the previous crystal activities are artsy, too.) There are also some art projects here just for fun, or to experiment with different techniques.

While you’re at it, get inspired by the art of Simon Beck! You can look him up online, or buy a book featuring his art. Wondering how he does it? Check it out:

Perhaps the most obvious snow-related art project is cutting out paper snowflakes. This tutorial at Instructables is the best one I’ve seen for folding the paper to get properly six-sided snowflakes. The diagrams are amazingly well done — very clear. My 8-year-old was able to follow the instructions without any trouble.

Just do be sure to leave some of the side folds intact or there won’t be anything to hold it together! (I discovered that if you skip the second fold, you get a three-sided snowflake, so that can be handy if you want to do some of the less conventional ones.) If you don’t have anything else to do with them, consider imitating Snowflake Bentley! Cut out a number of snowflakes from same-sized paper and then mount them all to a larger black piece of paper.

Draw snowflakes. Remember that they should have six sides/points, not four or eight. Use the images in your books for inspiration, and check out the tutorials here or here if you need some help getting started.

If your kids are a little older, have them practice creating snowflakes in graphic design software, using methods for rotating around a point. (This mandala-making tutorial uses essentially the same principles you’d use for making snowflakes.)

This project for painting winter trees uses a variety of art media, while still being accessible for young artists. It also builds observational skills used for nature studies as well as art.

Use Bubble Wrap to make prints that form the basis of snow and snowmen.

Draw crystals, with this art project from Elements of the Art Room.

Use acrylics and a spatter-painting technique to create this lovely art of bare trees in the snow.

Mimic Keats’ art from The Snowy Day. This fun project from Deep Space Sparkle uses several media and collage techniques to create something similar to Keats’ snowsuited children in snowdrifts. Use templates like the ones here to cut out snow-suited Peters, which can be used atop any technique of your choice for painting snow. (The author of that particular site used a dimensional paint so her artists could make tracks and/or angels in the snow.) Rubber-stamped snowflakes are another way to imitate the book’s art.

Music About Snow

What do your students think snow should sound like, musically? Does it make a difference if it’s a gentle snow, a blizzard, or already-fallen snow? Listen to songs from this playlist to see how various composers imagined it.

Biblical Tie-Ins

Many of the ideas above have built-in opportunities for talking about biblical concepts. What does the Bible say about snow? About other weather? What about rainbows? How do snowflakes reveal God’s design and order in the universe? How should we think biblically about severe weather?

“Come now, and let us reason together,”
Says the Lord,
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson,
They shall be as wool. (Is. 1:18 NKJV)

A Poem for Peter – History, Culture, etc.

A Poem for Peter: The Story of Ezra Jack Keats and the Creation of The Snowy Day

This, A Poem for Peter, is the other book I promised you earlier. It’s a gem of a book, and is so full it deserves a section of its own.

A Poem for Peter is the biography of Ezra Jack Keats and the story of the creation of The Snowy Day. It’s in the form of a poem — free verse — so it’s rich in the creative use of language.

It also covers a remarkable spectrum of history and social issues: immigration, the Great Depression, the World Wars, Keats changing his name (which was Katz) to sound less overtly Jewish due to social pressure, the Civil Rights movement, and the impact of art on culture. (The Snowy Day was ground-breaking, in that Peter wasn’t white like all the other story illustrations of its time.) There’s also the question of what goes into the making of a book.

There is a ton that can be done with this, potentially extending your Snowy Day studies in directions you might never have thought possible.