This Winter, preschool children have had many opportunities to explore the ice and snow that is everywhere!

In our classroom I felt it would be a fun and beneficial exercise to create their own individual paper snowflakes.  After explaining that each real snowflake is different and truly unique we all got to work!

Using white paper folded into triangles and an assortment of different types of scissors, each child involved was encouraged to cut along the edges in whatever way they wished.

The children worked for quite a while, concentrating on the challenging task.  This artistic opportunity allowed them to express individual creativity, further improved fine motor skills and surely supported the development of hand-eye coordination.

 

Once their cutting was completed, they were invited to paint glitter glue on their creation.  This exercise was equally exciting to them as they saw their “snowflake” begin to sparkle.  

When the decorating was all done, each child seemed very proud of their finished product…"perfect paper snowflakes!”

                                                      
 

With the abundant snowfall that we got in the past weeks, we decided to take art outside. The children like playing in the snow and painting so why not combine both?

We took our watercolors, brushes and cups of water outside. At first, the children were all painting on the ground.

Then, the big clump of snow on the table caught Mia’s attention. She touched the big clump but it did not fall apart.

Tiffany said, “ It looks like a mountain”.
Sabrina replied with “A snowy mountain”.
Rea started to paint the mountain and all the other girls followed.

Mia encouraged everyone to paint the whole mountain so it can be a “Rainbow Mountain”. The girls were all dedicated in painting to cover the whole mountain with color.

Preschool play is the primary source of development, allowing children to learn and practice many basic social skills.

While children shift between different types of play, as they grow and mature they participate less in unoccupied, solitary, onlooker and parallel play and more in associative and cooperative play which are more interactive.






Children in our four-year-old class participating in associative and cooperative play:



More cooperative play by our four-year-old class:






Children in our four-year-old class working cooperatively to create paper snow people:





The final finish:


We were able to get out on a snow day where the children worked cooperatively to build an actual snowman:




Until next time!

 
 

At the preschool we are feeling the holiday season is upon us with all the fun activities the children have been engaged in this month, from making latkes, to decorating cookies with our big buddies, to playing in the snow. After all those rainy days, the preschoolers were delighted to see the snow. On the snowy days we headed out to the turf to play in the snow. I was surprised to see most of the children just wanted to make foot tracks and seemed to enjoy looking at each others foot tracks, jumping over tracks or seeing where the tracks would take them and even guessing whose tracks the children saw.

Children strengthen their gross motor skills walking, running in the snow, learning how to balance their bodies on a slippery surface when walking in the snow. Children also learn to tightly pack snow, to build things. These are just a few of the many benefits of the snow season.