Explore the World: Snow

In response to the STEAM movement (and with great thanks to such great inspiration & encouragement from colleagues: Amy, Abby, and Kendra), this past fall I started a STEAM storytime series at the library. This is primarily aimed at preschoolers and their families, registration open to ages 3-7 in our library.

Books & Group Activities

Opening Activity
Building blocks from Kendra.
“Building Blocks”
(Tune of Good Night Ladies)
Hello ________
Hello ________
Hello ________
Come build something with your blocks!

Books

The First Day of Winter by Denise Fleming
Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner
Winter Is for Snow by Robert Neubecker

I think the most successful book for this day was “The First Day of Winter” — the kids were very into the cumulative nature of the book and it definitely held their attention.

Station Activities

Snow Painting
I brought snow in from outside. I put it in giant plastic bins (that normally housed our cushions for storytime) and let the kids paint with watercolors in the snow. This station BLEW their minds. I don’t think that any of the kids had ever thought that it was possible to paint with snow. I heard a lot of good conversations as to why the snow worked like water.

Mixing “Snow”
Using cornstarch and shaving cream, the kids made snow dough. I found out about this on Kendra. This is obviously a station full of mess, but another station that the kids thoroughly enjoyed. I had parents tell me that the dough lasted for a couple of plays after the program — I gave each kid a ziplock bag to take their dough home. This was a great trial and error experiment for the kids. They had to figure out which ingredient they needed more of to make a consistent dough.

Marshmallow Snowmen
I also took this station from Kendra. I put out a bunch of toothpicks, paper, glue, marshmallows, cotton balls, etc. and let the kids build their own snowmen. I spent a good deal of time during the introduction of the stations to remind parents that these were crafting marshmallows and that they were not meant for eating! I had a few kids that didn’t want to get their hands messy, so this station was a lot better for them.

Spin-a-Snowman
This was a flannelboard made by a predecessor. It has a little spinner and tells the kids what parts to add to the snowman. We played it as a group during the storytime session and I left it out during the station activities. Honestly, I so didn’t need it! The kids were more than happy to keep rotating between the first three stations.

Take-Home

My book display for this program:

And my handouts: which included an activity page, booklist, and a coloring page.

This is my official last Explore the World post! I did this last winter before I left my old library. I just felt like holding off the post until it was actual winter again.

And a Pinterest friendly image!