A Snowy Day Craftivity

Hi All! My name is Bee from Miss Teacher Resources 101. I am currently a Kindergarten Special Education Teacher in New York.  I am SO excited to be an author on this blog. I have been a seller on TpT for under a year so I'm one of the newer TpT and blog authors.

Now I don't know about all of ya'll, but New York had been facing incredibly cold weather conditions. About a week and a half ago, New York was preparing to have a blizzard at night, which also 

happened to be on the first day back to school after a (wonderful) holiday vacation. After preparing for a day full of learning and fun with my little kinders, I went to the cafeteria to pick up my students to alarmingly find that there were only 12 ... YES 12 students!! Automatically my mind went into panic mode. I started thinking ... okay maybe the other 13 will just trickle in! If I can get at least 20 out of the 25 students then I can conduct my lessons.  Then my glimmer of hope turned into full blown panic ... What if I don't get at least 20 students? What am I going to do?? I can't teach new lessons without the majority of my class here! And that is exactly how it went in my head for the first 10 minutes of the

school day. Has something like that ever happened to you?? (I would love to hear I am not alone in the comments section)!

Well needless to say, only 4 more students showed up, bringing my co-teacher and I to a total of 16 students. Yikes! No sticking to the lesson plan today! I would have to let go of my perfectionistic ways and think quick! So on the spot, I thought of a way I could fill up some of my literacy block ... and here it goes... drumroll please ... a snowy day craftivity! 

Immediately, I looked at my library selection of winter books and I saw "The Snowy Day," by Ezra Jack Keats! Perfect!! (Although in my head it was more like "SCOOOORRRRRE!!!!!!!")!

So here is what we spent our morning doing so that we could make sure we had a terrific, fun morning:

* I read "The Snowy Day" out loud. I asked them questions and had them turn and talk just like any other literacy lesson that I conduct.

* We then created a whole class web and brainstormed ideas of different things that we could do on a snow day.

* The students were responsible to choose one idea and draw a picture of themselves doing whatever it is that their perfect snowy day is. I had my students do this on light blue construction paper.

* We added cotton balls to our scenery to show snow falling down.

* Finally we wrote a sentence about our perfect snow day and what we would do.

Now, I am going to share something with you - I am SO HORRIBLE at taking pictures of student work. This is so silly on my part, so I feel so sad that I do not have pictures to show you. So instead I will share some of the ideas my students came up with... drinking hot chocolate (then they used the cotton balls as whipped cream), watching TV in the house and then showing a window with snow falling down, building a snowman (using the cotton balls to show different snowmen), etc.

I have uploaded a freebie onto my TpT store that gives your directions and options. Included in that freebie is a graphic organizer and snowy day writing paper. Click on the link below the pictures to bring you to the freebie.

My Perfect Snowy Day - Link to Freebie

I am going to conclude my (already a novel) blog post by telling you that this was such a simple activity and the students had a BLAST!!! It also was so simple and fun that it completely dissipated the chaos in my head. Sometimes when you are in a jam, your mind can go nutty (if you are a perfectionist like me especially)! So next time you need a quick activity in a pinch, let this be your guide!