Snow

Books

🌿🌻Whose Prints? by Kari Ellen and Kim Smith
In this cute and interactive board book, explore the world of fresh fallen snow with illustrated prints and page cutouts to reveal what animal left them. This book includes deer, squirrels, rabbits, foxes, owls, and mice.

🌿🌻The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
In this classic board book, a little boy named Peter is awed by the first snowfall of the year and bundles up in his red suit to explore the snowy world outside.

🌿🌻The Mitten by Jan Brett
In this classic board book, a grandmother fulfills a young boy’s request for a pair of snow-white mittens. Almost immediately, he loses one of them while playing in the snow. A series of progressively larger animals find the cozy mitten, stretching out the knit more and more until a sneeze sends the animals tumbling out and causes the mitten to sail through the air back to its owner.

🌿🌻Barn in Winter by Chambrae Griffith (illustrated by Taia Morley)
With wonderful rhythm and rhyme, this beautifully illustrated board book explores a farm during a winter storm. The snow-covered pens and pastures of a farm sit quiet and empty as the animals take shelter in the warm safety of the barn.

🌿🌻Snow Still by Holly Surplice
In this simple board book, a fawn explores the fresh snow, playing, sliding, finding other creatures, and watching the snowflakes fall before curling up safely with family.

🌿🌻Little Snowflake by Suzanne Fossey (illustrated by Gina Maldonado)
This illustrated board book describes the “life cycle” of a snowflake, describing the frostier side of the water cycle through a first-person narrative. Sound and simple science explanations balance out everything having faces.

🌿🌻Snow Days by Deborah Kerbel

🌻Red Sled by Lita Judge
This illustrated story has next to no text but depicts a group of animals picking up a red sled left against the outside of a house at the end of the day and taking it for a wild ride down the hill!

🌿Best in Snow by April Pulley Sayre
With bold photo illustrations punctuated by simple verses (at 2-6 words per page), this book describes the characteristics of snow as it falls, accumulates, melts, and refreezes. It showcases many North American animals in high contrast amidst the snow. An appendix shares more detailed facts about the formation (and forms) of snow.

🌿Outside by Deirdre Gill
A little boy goes out to play in the snow. While his older brother stays indoors, the boy builds a snow castle and has an imaginative adventure until the sun goes down and it’s time to go back inside–but first his brother comes out to join him in the twilight snow.

🌿So Much Snow by Kristen Schroeder (illustrated by Sarah Jacoby)
With cute soft illustrations and short rhythmic text, this book follows the accumulation of snow piling higher and higher through a week until the snow finally stops. As the sun emerges and warming weather melts it away over the next week, we notice the forest animals are slowly uncovered from tall moose down to tiny mouse… before the snow starts up again.

🌿 Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner (illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal)
An illustrated fiction book in which a child and parent take a walk through the woods, exploring concepts of animals that are active in the winter and those that are inactive under the snow.

🌿Owl Moon by Jane Yolen (illustrated by John Schoenherr)
In this illustrated story, a young child and her father go out silently into the winter night, listening and watching for owls. Their patience pays off and they eventually hear–and see– a great horned owl that flies close to them and calls back and forth with her father until it flies away and they walk quietly back home through the snow. Also available as a board book!

🌿 Let’s Go Home, Little Bear by Martin Waddel
In this story, Little Bear is feeling wary of suspicious sounds in the woods and Big Bear reassures him that it’s merely the sound of the snow, the wind, and the dripping ice. When Little Bear at last becomes too tired, Big Bear carries him the rest of the way home.

🌿Secrets of Winter by Carron Brown (illustrated by Georgina Tee)
This Shine-a-Light book describes wildlife in the winter, including animals that are active in the snow and animals that mostly sleep through the season.

🌿 Stranger in the Woods by Carl R. Sams and Jean Stoick
In this photo-illustrated story, a chatty group of animals in the woods is stirred up as they come across a mysterious stranger– a snowman! Stuffed with carrots and seeds, the animals help themselves to the goodies offered by the “stranger.” When the animals disperse, two watching children discuss coming back through the winter to offer food through the snowman.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland as sung by Peggy Lee, illustrated by Tim Hopgood
Illustrator Tim Hopgood has taken on a series of illustrated books based on songs that inspire beautiful imagery, such as Singing in the Rain, What a Wonderful World, and this winter classic.

We Want Snow: A Wintry Chant by Jamie A. Swanson (illustrated by Emily Boone)
The children in this book have been waiting and waiting for snow– and it finally arrives. This book is great for a snow unit, whether it’s been a white winter or not!

Creative Art Opportunities

⛄️Circle sponge prints
⛄️Black circles and orange triangles on circular paper
⛄️Paint with textured white paint or whipped cream
⛄️Paint with frozen paint ice cubes
⛄️Use food coloring in a spray bottle to paint a snow sculpture (older children)
⛄️Collage with paper circles of different sizes and colors
⛄️Painting with large carrot
⛄️White chalk on black or dark paper

Hands On Experiences

⛅️Explore white rice, potato flakes, or cornstarch in a sensory table
⛅️Explore snow with winter-active native animal toys in a sensory bin
⛅️Recycle cardboard to make a simple sled
❄️Build a snow man
❄️Make a “nest” in deep snow–form snow “eggs”
❄️Throw snowballs towards a target
❄️Build a circular snow fort
❄️Balance on a ridge of packed snow
❄️Slide or sled down a small hill or snow mound
❄️Play hide & seek among snow forts
❄️Shovel pathways through the snow to run along
❄️On a walk or hike, look for animal tracks left in the snow
❄️Make snow bricks with rectangular bins

If there’s no snow outside:
⛅️Explore shaved or pulse-blended ice in a sensory table
⛅️Explore white rice, potato flakes, or cornstarch in a sensory table
⛅️Match mittens into pairs
🌿Put out feeders for hungry birds and squirrels

Songs to Learn and Sing

“Winter Snow” – Claudia Robin Gunn
“Winterful Day” – Jessie Farrell & the Gumboot Kids
“It’s Snowing Outside” – Stephanine Leavell
“Skating”– Stephanie Leavell
“Snowfall” – Margaret Wise Brown, Tom Proutt, Emily Gary
“Winter Adventure” – Margaret Wise Brown, Tom Proutt, Emily Gary
“Cherry Tree” – Margaret Wise Brown, Tom Proutt, Emily Gary
“Hot Chocolate” – Stephanie Leavell
“Jingle Bells” – Carpenters (a song about a sleigh ride, not actually a Christmas song)
“Winter Wonderland“ – Peggy Lee (another classic winter song)
“I’m a Little Snowflake” – Laurie Berkner
“Yuki (Snow)” – Elizabeth Mitchell
“Icicles” – Laurie Berkner
“Winter Lullaby” – Laurie Berkner
“First Snow” – Ginalina
“Snowflakes” – Makin’ Music Rockin’ Rhythms

NIYN – Snow on Spotify
NIYN – Snow on YouTube
All playlists are works in progress and are actively curated when I have a unit in play or preparation, so new songs may appear and old songs may be removed if they don’t suit my designs.