Christmas Skholē - Day 4
...talking about snow when there is no snow to be found
In the part of the world where we live, snow is a very rare occurrence at Christmastime. It sometimes snows before December, more often in the new year, but I have never known a white Christmas in my lifetime. However, the imagery and singing of snow at Christmas is a hard one to ignore, so today, we focused on Snow.
Toddler/Preschooler Shelf
On the wall behind the shelf, I stuck our Montessori Family subscription snowflake matching cards (from the one-off Christmas box, linked here). As with most things on this shelf, I don’t tend to point anything out, or direct any observations that my child might make. Instead, I leave the children to come to the shelf to explore in their own time. I therefore didn’t mention that each snowflake had a matched pair, but the 3 year old pointed it out to me, (“look, mummy, that snowflake matches that one”).
I added a basket of Schleich model animals: polar bears (linked here) and penguins (linked here). Whilst I realise this is a bit of a stretch for a conversation on snow, it did lead to a conversation about polar animals and how penguins and polar bears actually don’t live together at all.
I have a great love of vintage puzzles, especially peg puzzles, so I pulled out a snowy scene peg puzzle that I found in a charity shop.
Finally, a game on the shelf that really isn’t for the toddler or preschooler, but I added it here for the older kids. Ice Cubed (linked here), is a mathematical logic puzzle that can be played as a single player, or in pairs.
Books
Snow is a tricky theme to have too many items available for play or manipulation, but I do have a great selection of books:
The Snowman (2-7 years) - a classic book and one that had to be included. The version we have is the original wordless version, however, I have seen that they have published an edition with a written story, if that’s more your thing
The Snowman (Magnetic Play edition) - we also have a version of the same story but with simple text and magnets that can be placed on the scenes. Unfortunately, this is now out of stock.
The Snowy Day (1-5 years) - a beautifully illustrated and calming book. The movie adaptation that you can find on streaming services, is also highly recommended
Snow & Ice (First Starts Science) - an easy read science book for children
A Thing Called Snow - (2-5 years) - this book gives wonderful descriptions of snow, great to develop conversations
One Snowy Night - (2-4 years) - part of the Tales from Percy’s Park series
The Science of Snow
We started by watching a fascinating clip from Brian Cox, “The Science of Snowflakes” (linked here) which led to a discussion about the shape and structure of snowflakes. I then gave the older boys a large hexagon to draw around, so they could design their own snowflake on paper.
A discussion on snowflakes actually lends itself to more of a mathematical discussion and not just science. We discussed fractal patterns and symmetry and spent a long time looking at images of snowflakes on the internet.
Of course, we then had to the design and cut out our own paper snowflakes, it would be rude not to at this point… There is something very calming about folding and cutting paper.
Finally, the science of snow led us to a demonstration and discussion about changing states: solid, liquid, gas. I had prepped some ice cubes (and yes, I know thats not snow) and we talked about how ice (snow) changes state.
I love how a simple topic, like snow, can evolve into a discussion that covers so many subjects. Sometimes, I don’t even plan that, it just evolves naturally as we discuss