Unseasonal Snow

The recent unseasonal weather has reminded me of  how desperate the kids were for snow before last year.

Last November, Beth was getting really impatient for it to snow. During the summer we had found some fake snow at a charity shop, I decided to hurry nature along a bit and created a sensory activity for her and Daniel. Along with the fake snow (which had been in the freezer for 30 minutes to make it realistically cold) I added iridescent strands and blue and turquoise sequines.

At first they enjoyed exploring the new textures, running the strands through their fingers and squishing the snow. I asked Beth to tell Daniel what the snow felt like, he was also exploring it and hearing me and Beth describe the sensations as cold and squishy helped reafirm his vocabulary.

After a while Beth asked to get the animals out. We have a box of animal figure and cards that get pulled out for alsorts of play. When Beth was around 18 months old she really liked penguins so we had quite a few that went straight in. We then started to sort through the animal cards I made for a story sack*. We took out all the cards that could live in the arctic. Beth took out the pengin, whale and the dolphin, I suggested the walrus, Beth thought that this should live somewhere hot because it was "skinny" rather than furry. I pointed out there was snow in the background and she conceeded that it might live in the snow.

the "hot" animals

* The cards were made by laminting the card with photos of  animals. the story sack was for one of the most beautifally illustrated books I've come across Can You See a Little Bear?