Snowman Story Time

Since it might not be Winter much longer here in NJ, I wanted to get the obligatory "snowman" story time out of the way. With the holidays and being closed, I haven't had much time to come up with a cooler theme. Eh, it happens.

The Books:

Snow Party by Harriet Ziefert

A Winter Day by Douglas Florian

The First Day of Winter by Denise Fleming

Spring Snowman adapted by Jill Barnes

I really liked The First Day of Winter by Denise Fleming even though it is about the beginning of winter, but it is about building a snowman, so it didn't really matter about the time of year.  This story has the potential to be a great flannelboard without lots of pieces.

Spring Snowman is the saddest book I've ever read. The illustrations are sad, but I really liked the idea. The forest animals are excited because Spring is coming and try to explain Spring to the Snowman. Of course, the Snowman melts and in its place grows a bunch of white flowers in the shape of a snowman, hence the Spring Snowman. Really cute story, creepily drawn animals. The book is so old that I couldn't find an image online. I had to take a picture of the book!

Activity: Five Snowmen
Made this from clip art and just colored their hats different colors.

What was in the Memory Box?
Since I couldn't hide actual snow in the box for fear of melting, (aw man!) I hid a snowman left from an old snowman craft. All the kids wanted to "pet" the snowman.

Craft: 
I don't have a picture of this, but I gave everyone a piece of blue construction paper, three circles, crayon and white paint. They were able to make finger print snowflakes with the paint after they assembled and colored their snowmen. Very easy craft.

Snowman Make-n-Take Craft

Since the schools around here get out late, program attendance has gone down a lot. I have a few after school activities that start around 4:15pm, but some kids don't get home until almost 4:30pm. Instead of planning crafts for 20-30 kids, I was planning for an unknown number that usually ended up being 5-10 kids. If I'm going to spend a lot of time planning and gathering materials, I want a bigger turnout than 10, so I started scheduling programs that wouldn't take too much prep and it wouldn't matter if I had 2 kids or 35 kids. This is when Make-n-Take Crafts were born. I have been doing them for 2 years and I can have them anytime, even if I'm not in the library! 

I print instructions, put them in plastic displays and leave them out on the tables in the Children's Area. The materials for the crafts are kept on a table in front of the Children's Desk. The staff member (if there is one) can monitor the materials and keep track of how many people are making the craft for statistics. I put a disclaimer on our paper and online events calendar that supplies are available on a first come, first serve basis. If I'm not in the library, I will be able to tell how many people made the craft by how many supplies are left and this takes the pressure off staff working that day.

I have been scheduling Make-n-Takes at night from 4pm-8pm or all day Saturday 10am-5pm. The most I've had for a Make-n-Take is 63 people and its great because that's more than what I would have in a craft scheduled at a certain time because I'm restricted by space. The set up for this month's Make-n-Take was snowman themed with these directions on tables:

 I don't like to make samples because it sometimes restricts creativity, but I usually make one for the Make-n-Takes since I might not be working that day and I don't want the staff to really be bothered by the craft. So here's my Make-n-Take Snowman:

 The only materials I left out were glue sticks, crayons (which are always out on the tables with coloring sheets), scissors, white paper, circle patterns, and printed black hats to cut out. 
Very easy craft and I'll probably cut circles out for a snowman craft with my story time kids.