With the holiday season and the first snow fall, comes lots of excitement in students. Having fun, hands on, educational winter activities available gives students an outlet for this excitement in a meaningful way.
I love having different formats and options for students to choose from. Setting up centers or stations gives students choice and ownership over their work, which always ends up pushing them to put in their best effort! Below are a mix of engaging winter activities, including some freebies!
WINTER GLYPHS:
I constantly hear from teachers about how much their students love glyphs! They are also great way to learn a little bit about your students while having them create an adorable craft to hang on a classroom bulletin board or take home to showcase on the fridge.
They also lend themselves perfectly to creating individual bar graphs (or one large classroom bar graph) and analyzing authentic classroom data. This winter glyphs pack includes a penguin glyph, snowman glyph, and a snow globe glyph.
WINTER WRITING GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS:
Graphic organizers are super helpful visual supports for growing writers. When made into fun, seasonal graphic organizers, students don’t even realize how much work and reflection they are doing.
This five senses graphic organizer below can also be found free in my TpT shop! You can use it as a stand-alone activity, or for students to organize writing sensory details for a winter writing piece.
CLASSROOM KINDNESS CRAFT:
Seasonal activities bring a chance to go bit outside of the academic box and connect with your students personally and socially. This classroom community craft is a great way to build up your students’ confidence and spread kindness throughout your classroom. Students love going home with a bucket full of nice things that their teacher and classmates have to say about them!
NEW YEARS LIFT THE FLAP:
The fresh start of a new year is a perfect time for students to reflect and set new goals for themselves. One way to have students record these goals is in a super simple and low prep lift the flap organizer. It encourages students to set academic and personal goals.
WINTER POETRY:
This free “December is for Celebrating” poem is an adorable, original poem by LMB Literacy. She also includes an illustration activity for visualizing a rhyme in the poem.
WINTER WRITING JOURNAL:
With winter’s arrival comes lots of excitement in your growing writers. This is a great way to motivate them with prompts that are applicable to what is currently happening around them.
These writing prompts come in different formats, but my favorite is the cut and paste journal option. Student choice is another way to encourage them to write, so with this activity students get to pick which prompt they want to use to guide their writing that day.
To find the resources from this blog post in my TpT shop, click on the covers below:
Need Digital Winter Activities as well? Check out this blog post!