My kids love to see their names in print. They are excited to start recognizing and writing their own names. Even my littlest one that isn’t yet able to write letters used this activity to start learning how to recognize and spell his own name with a little assistance. These snowmen were the perfect winter based name activity for this month.
Snowman Names (Creative Art – Make and Play)
Supplies
- paper*
- buttons*
- paper circles*
- background paper*
- extra paper*
- crayons/markers
- scissors
- glue
- cups
**The inspiration and materials for this post were provided by Mother Goose Time.
Discuss
What shapes do you see on a snowman?
The kids were thrilled to have ready made circles to build their snowmen. Once prompted they also noted that the buttons were circles. They all agreed that the hat would need to be another shape; possibly a square or a rectangle.
Make
Invite the child to write one letter of his name on each circle. (Cut out extra circles if needed.)
My daughter is able to write the letters in her name. Gluing them onto the paper was a bit more challenging, since she had to work backwards to make sure the top of the snowman stuck out from the top of the background paper instead of the bottom.
Give the child one more circle for the head.
My son was all about using buttons for the eyes and had a great time cutting out the hat. He struggled a little with how he wanted to the mouth and nose to look, but had a great time drawing different shapes, one right over top of the other.
Help the child arrange the letter circles to spell his name.
Again the challenge was spelling the names so that the bottom letters were on the paper. My son was able to make a snowman with the correct order of letters for his name, but required some help keeping them in the right order and in the right orientation as he glued them onto the paper.
Invite children to decorate with the supplies.
In addition to buttons for eyes and a marker to draw the rest of the face, sticks were made available for arms. My daughter chose to draw some onto her snowman, but my son had a great adventure going outside to find the perfect snowman arm sticks. He brought in several to choose from and spent some time in trial and error finding the right size sticks for the job.
Play
Set up a snowman design center. Set out cups and other round items to trace.
Encourage children to visit the center throughout the day to make more snowmen.
We actually found a 3 inch circle hole punch from Amazon and the kids have been using it to make perfect circles out of white cardstock. The kids have been obsessed with using it both to make additional snowman and to make ornaments for the tree.
Observe
Did the child write the first letter of his name? What other letters can he write? What other symbols or shapes can the child identify?
My Creative Mind
My Creative Mind is a tool used by Mother Goose Time preschool programs to help parents facilitate conversations with their children about their artwork. A description is given of the activity with a couple questions to help parents support their children’s learning and creativity. Below is an example of the My Creative Mind card for the Snowman Names activity.
Today I made my name in the snow.
There are so many ways to dress a snowman.
The snowman I made is dressed in letters. I had to count, write on and arrange my materials during this art project. Now my snowman has a name!
Ask Me
How many letters are in your name?
Did you make any clothes for your snowman?
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Happy Learning,
