Exciting Ideas and Resources for Winter Learning!

Winter often gets a bad rap. Yes, there are many days during the winter season that are full of rain or snow, but that doesn't mean that the entire season is a bummer. Why not look at the winter season as an opportunity to learn about things you may overlook the rest of the year?

We've put together the following list of exciting winter learning ideas, broken down into six categories, for you and your family to enjoy!


Winter Holidays: Learn about the origins of the ancient holiday of Hanukkah and compare how Christmas is celebrated in Scandinavia to how it is celebrated where your family lives.

Hanukkah: The Festival of Lights

Hanukah is usually celebrated during the end of November and beginning of December, but you and your child can learn about Hanukkah any time of the year with this lesson that incorporates engaging books, short videos, festive music, fun crafts and traditional food and games!

A Scandinavian Christmas

Explore how Christmas is celebrated in the cold northern countries of Scandinavia. Learn to say “Merry Christmas” in three languages (Norwegian, Icelandic & Finnish), create traditional Christmas ornaments and bake traditional foods from Scandinavia! This is a super fun way to incorporate learning about geography too!



Animals in Winter: Many animals prepare for winter in different ways! Discover what those ways are with these wonderful winter resources!

Migrate, Hibernate, or Tolerate: How Animals Survive the Winter (Bundle)
This bundle contains six resources to explore how animals survive winter: 

  • Animals with Winter Coats
Through engaging books, interesting video, an art project, and brief writing activity, children will learn and demonstrate what they have learned about why some animals have different colored body coverings during different seasons of the year.

  • Great Migrations
Throughout this lesson, children will learn about how and why different animals migrate. They will create a table about many different animals. Then, they will choose 1-2 animals to study in more depth and chart each of those animals’ great migrations on a world map.


  • Hummingbirds and Their Amazing Journey 
Children will explore hummingbirds and the perilous journey a hummingbird takes each year as it migrates. Throughout the lesson, children will engage in: literacy activities, their choice of several printable note taking options, creative projects, and creating a hummingbird feeder of their own!

  • Insects in the Winter...Is That a Bugsicle? 
Children will learn about different ways insects prepare for and survive the winter as they engage in hands-on experiments and creative projects, read an interesting book, and enjoy few short videos.

  • Read, Connect, & Create with Heartwood Hotel
This lesson is designed to encourage children of various ages to connect over a great book! They will have discussions about the book, learn a bit about what animals do to survive the winter, engage in outdoor activities, and work on a S.T.E.M. project as they make connections to the book Heartwood Hotel: A True Home by Kellie George.

  • Bonus: Welcome Winter Activity Poster



Winter STEM: Bring the outdoors in with these snowy S.T.E.M. challenges! 

Build a Tall Snowman S.T.E.M. Challenge 

Children will apply S.T.E.M. skills as they work to design and build the tallest snowman that they can using paper, tape, and other similar supplies that you have at access to.


Snowy Building Brick Adventure (LEGO Brick S.T.E.M.) 

Children will apply problem solving skills, creativity, teamwork and more as they use their building bricks to build solutions to problems they encounter on their Snowy Lego® Brick Adventure! 

Winter Life Skills: Practice critical thinking and learn a new life skill! 

Can YOU Survive an Unexpected Night in the Cold? 

In this lesson children will be presented with different scenarios one may be faced with if they were in a survival situation. This lesson is meant to simulate what would happen if your family was out for a hike in the mountains but were unable to get home. Children will need to use critical thinking skills to assess each situation and make the choice they think is best and they will discover if their choices lead them to safety or danger!


Winter Social Studies: Discover the origins of the famous Iditarod, the famous dog sled race across Alaska! Why not learn about the life and work of Snowflake Bently, the first man to successfully photograph snowflakes!

Origins of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race


Children will learn about the origins of the Iditarod as they watch a brief video and use creative thinking as they complete response activities. They will even have the option of figuring out how long it would take them to walk, bike, or run the distance of the original journey! Be sure to check out Beyond the Activity at the end of this document for extension activities if your child is interested in learning more about the Iditarod Sled Dog Race which occurs the first Saturday in March each year.

Discover & Connect with Snowflake Bentley 


Children will engage in discussion about and make connections to the life and works of Wilson Bentley as they enjoy a book, take photographs. and apply art and S.T.E.M. skills as they create a snowflake of their own!
Reading this Winter: Reading is always a great activity, but it's especially great during the winter. Use winter to delve into a good book and go on a book themed scavenger hunt, learn more about banned books or a simple way to create poetry and so much more!

Library Scavenger Hunt 

Encourage children to discover features of your local library, apply skills to navigate the library, and to find some new books they may want to read as they complete unique library scavenger hunts!



Winter Reads Scavenger & Vocabular Hunt

Activities in this document includes two picture scavenger hunt pages for keeping track of winter related words and pictures that your child sees and hears and an interesting word scavenger hunt to encourage your child to record new and interesting words that they come across while reading or listening to their favorite winter books.



Fill in the Blank(ets) to Create a Story (Winter Mad Libs) 

Your children will create fun and likely quite funny short stories as they provide parts of speech to fill in the blank(ets) for missing words in a story. This activity is designed to have a little something for children of all ages. Take a look at the recommended adaptations for this lesson for different grade levels. Then, have fun getting in a little language arts practice (and some laughter) as a family, class, or co-op.


Blackout Poetry

Blackout poetry is a nonintimidating way of creating poetry. Provide your child with some or all of the following pages and ask them to read though them and circle words that stick out to them and black out the rest of the words. It's that simple. The words that are not blacked out become the poem.


The Fiery History of Banned Books

Introduce your learner to the history of book banning with this watch and respond activity. Be sure to check the Beyond the Activity page for more content and suggested activities on and about banned books. 



Short Story Comic Strips

Looking for a great way to keep your child engaged when listening to short stories? Challenge your child to use these resources to create a comic strip of the short story they are listening to! These comic strips are great for the child who loves to draw or even for the child two is hesitant to create art.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Have You Ever Wondered What It's Like to Raise Chickens?

Image
As I'm standing at my tiny kitchen sink washing oily breakfast dishes my children rushed inside, clearly upset, "Mom! Mr. Bingley (my favorite rooster ) is covered in motor oil!" How he became covered in motor oil, I have no idea, but I was certain that Mr. Bingley needed that oil off him as soon as possible. We filled a bucket with rather warm water and washed him twice with my favorite fall dish soaps ( Mrs. Meyers Acorn Spice and Apple cider ) and then two more times with Dawn dish soap to be sure all visible signs of the motor oil were gone from his feathers and comb. W e used Q-tips to clean out around his eyes and his nostrils too. However, with the days being cooler and nights growing colder, I knew I couldn’t return Mr. Bingley to his coop being all wet or hypothermia could occur. I asked my kids to I grab my blow dryer and I spent the next 20 mins or so drying every one of his feathers and getting some snuggles in the process. It’s no secret that I love my bir...
Read more

The Joy of Homemade Bread

Image
When I became a mom, I decided that I wanted my babies to have the best possible food I could provide for them. When my oldest, who is now in high school, began to eat solid meals I began baking my family's bread from scratch. It was a time-consuming process to commit to each day but worth it. As the years went by, my family grew larger, my life got busier,  and I didn't have the time anymore to bake bread each day. Eventually we purchased a bread machine that we all loved for many years! I think of a bread machine as the equivalent of crock pot, just toss in all your ingredients, press start and pull out a loaf of bread when it beeps. Recently we had to retire our bread machine, which was a difficult decision to make, and some people may find that super inconvenient, but to me it's an opportunity  to slow down and get back to enjoying the process of baking bread with my hands once again. For my family, it's important for us to know where our food comes from and what i...
Read more

Winter Weather Survival | Can YOU Survive a Night in the Cold?

Image
Everyone feels the call of adventure, even in the late fall and early winter, but are you prepared for some of the what-if situations that can occur during an outing in unpredictable weather conditions? Depending on what area of the world you live in your winters may be warm and sunny, cool and rainy or if you live somewhere like me, they are downright frigid. Snow and freezing temperatures hang around for a good part of the winter which makes preparing for winter an important task that shouldn't be overlooked.  Living in a National Forest with freezing temperatures and snow, then moving to a high desert region with sub-zero winter temperatures as low as -25 degrees Fahrenheit, we have learned the importance of being prepared for the what ifs than can and do happen when the weather changes for the worse. Last year we spent two hours on the side of the road in three-degree weather with our four kids while we waited for a tow truck. That experience alone was enough for us to understa...
Read more