Winter weather hit the south with a vengeance this week.  Snow in the forecast along with low temperatures.  But, for once, the school districts didn’t announce school closures 2 days in advanced.  They actually waited to see what the weather was going to do and waited until the day before.  The problem was that they believed that the weather would follow the predicted path.  Ouch, it didn’t. Unfortunately, it showed up with its ugly brothers, sleet and ice.

Just like all of the children in my class I was wishing for snow.  I love watching it fall.  I love walking in it.  I love how pretty everything is.  But if I can help it, I don’t like making up snow days.  Our head of school doesn’t either so we took advantage of the weather arriving around noon and came to school with an early dismissal.

My coworkers were busy hitting Pinterest to find snow related ideas to make our short day educational but fun.  It was a busy enrichment day for my class so we only concentrated on one theme.

Snowmen: Two activities, one sheet of paper.

The first activity was to label a snowman.  Perfect!  We started off with me giving verbal “how to draw your snowman” directions.  It turned out to be a great listening activity.  Then I gave them the labels which they used their independent reading skills to correctly place them.  They really had a lot of fun doing it because they had an investment in the snowman they were labeling.

After they finished labeling their snowmen I had them turn their papers to the other side and they made a snow picture with a snowman worksheet.  The purpose of this wasn’t the cut and paste snowman but using a horizon in the picture.  We have been talking about drawing pictures with a horizon to give the picture some depth and to correspond with their lesson with the art teacher and vanishing points.

Before we knew it, the weather had change and freezing rain had arrived.  Early dismissal was moved up an hour and we all got home safe and sound before it got really bad.

Then we all waited……..for the snow to come and this is what we got.

It was just enough to make it pretty, test my dogs that aren’t used to it and along with the icy roads, enough to keep us home for two more snow days.