Stand up Snow pals

Here is a fun way to create a 3-D snow pal and reuse coffee, cocoa and oatmeal containers. (which I can never seem to bring myself to throw away.)
First students draw 3 horizontal lines across a piece of white paper. We made our line crooked so they look like snow.
Then students add faces and other embellishments.
I helped each student tape their paper around a cylinder shaped container.

This was particularly fun for my class because we have so little snow in Minnesota this year that these are the most realistic snow pals they may get to make!

Penguins

This is a fun winter project and a nice follow-up activity to a penguin unit. Use an 8.5 X 11 piece of black construction paper with the corners cut off for the body of the penguin. The eyes are quarter size circles, the beak is a square folded into a triangle, the belly is a U shaped piece of white paper and the feet can be any way you like. I made a master sheet with the beak, feet and eyes and copied it on yellow construction paper for the kids to cut out. I made tracers for the bellies and had the kids trace and cut those out of white paper. We added wiggle eyes at the end. We hung ours from our ceiling clips so they move. They add a fun whimsy to the classroom.

January Quilt

Mittens are a great winter hand print project. Prepare a class supply of construction paper. Allow the students to chose the color of their mittens. Apply desired color of tempera paint onto the student's hands with a sponge or paint brush. Press the student's hands on to the paper moving them slightly from side to side so that the fingers blur. Add 3 dots to the bottom of each hand print to create the wrist of the mitten. Program the paper with the month desired after the paint has dried.

This year I received a donation of a bag of floss picks. We used them as ice-skates for our tube snowmen.

Projects that allow students to pick out bits and pieces and create unique expressions of their individuality.

This is out display of winter crafts.

Snowmen from recycled materials

Recycled materials are a great way to save money and the environment. It is personally one of my life's missions to reduce waste whenever possible so I love this snowman project. It all begins with toilet paper tubes. I chose to glue 2 together but this can be done with a single tube. The students painted their tubes white.

When the tubes dried we decorated the snowmen with all sorts of odds and ends left over from previous projects. I save these in a container labeled "bits and pieces" so these kinds of things are always on hand. I also find it handy to cut any left over pieces of construction paper into 4 squares. I keep the squares on hand for all the projects that require multiple squares of paper or to use with a die cut machine.

I took twigs from my back yard to use are snowman arms. I had to hot glue those on for the kids but the end product is fun and stand on it's own.