Snowmen Windsocks

Another fun Winter activity that we did this week was our Snowmen Windsocks.  This is another one of those activities that is definitely on the “crafty” side of things, but I still like it for the sheer value of how they look when they’re all hanging from the ceiling.  Plus, it turns into a nice conversation about mouths, noses, eyes (and carrots) for those English Language Learners.

The main part of the activity that the kids get to do is draw their snowman faces.  Last year’s class had a lot more trouble drawing the faces where they needed to be on the paper, so this year we tried a trick to help them find the right place.  We gave them a 9 x 12 piece of white construction paper for the body.  Then we covered up the sides of the paper with two scrap pages of paper (not white), so they could only see the middle third of the piece of paper.  Then we had them draw the snowman face only in that exposed area.  This really helped them hone in on where to put everything .  I think they did a super job on them – only one drew a round head and then filled in the face parts, and we had a lot more of that last year.  Then they turned their white papers over and used a glue stick to glue on six or seven strips of colored paper. (Mine were 1" wide and 15" long.)

Later that night (during Teacher TV Time, which is my usual time to work on my teacher jobs) I glued on the hats.  The hats are black construction paper cut to 3"x12".  You cut into the rectangles as shown - cut on the solid lines, and fold on the dotted line.

Then you glue the hat on the top of the head, being careful not to glue the flap down.

Snowman not drawn to scale :)

After you do this, you can "roll' them up into a tube and then glue them this way.  If the flaps are folded, they will stick out like so:

Then you can punch holes on either side of their little snowmen heads and tie yarn to it for hanging.

Here they all are, ready for transport to school...all set to blow in the breeze of our classroom.