Integrating quality children's literature adds tremendous value to your classrooms and home school activities. I love basing my classroom work around authors and specific children's books. Here are my winter favorites:
5) Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
This book is a lovely way to add some calm to an otherwise hectic time in children's lives. You can use this book to work on the Silence Game, a study of owls, and the phonogram 'ow'.
4) The Mitten Tree by Candace Christiansen
This book invites children to think of ways that they can give to others within their community. You can add mitten matching with either cards or real mittens, hanging mitten ornaments on a small tree in practical life, working on the sound 'm' in language, and designing mittens in art. I also like to put a pair of mittens on a tray for students to practice taking mitten on and off.
3) The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett
So many of Jan Brett's books work well with the winter season. Classics like The Mitten, The Hat, and Annie and the Wild Animals are perfect for winter reading and activities. The Gingerbread Baby is an adorable book adds a bit of holiday touches without being overtly Christmas themed. Its a good book to work on retelling a story by adding animal and a gingerbread baby puppets to your language shelf. You can add gingerbread scented play dough as well as designing gingerbread babies and/or houses to the art shelf.
Other choices would be to make and decorate gingerbread cookies or create gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, frosting, and candy.
Check out my gingerbread themed Montessori activities and Boom Cards!
2) The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
This book has so many fun possibilities for extension activities. You can play movement activities by walking around the room with toes pointing in, out and with dragging feet. You can design snowmen with play dough and/or other art supplies and introduce the sphere. This story can spark great sentence or story building through giving the students the prompt, "What adventures would you have on a snowy day?"
1) Sadie and the Snowman by Allen Morgan
Sadie and the Snowman is one of my favorite winter read aloud books. The predictable language is perfect for emergent readers. It lends itself to talking about feelings and for a myriad of snowman activities.
You can work on states of matter by conducting water experiments and freezing water like Sadie does in the book. Freezing paint in ice cube trays with craft sticks allows children to engage in process art by enjoying painting with frozen paint.
Check out my snowman extension materials and Boom Cards!
