Before the real snow started to fall, our class discovered that a surprisingly fun substitute for snow turned out to be three bags full of large, fluffy cotton balls. Cotton balls certainly don’t have all the qualities of real snow but they are white, fluffy, and do a nice job promoting conversation and pretend play when used to create a cotton ball blizzard in a box…
We started our day exploring cotton ball snowballs by reading the book “Snowballs” by Lois Ehlert…
“Snowballs” by Lois Ehlert is really more about snowmen but as you know, every snowman starts with a snowball. This book shares wonderfully illustrated pictures of snowmen with faces made from corn seeds, raisins, nuts, bolts, and other items that promote lots of conversation about snow and snowman faces…
Before reading our book, I thought it would be fun if we could get into the winter mood first so I invited the children to help me create our own mini-blizzard by tossing some cotton ball snowballs into our large box…
Then the children all climbed into the box and Mrs. Courtney read “Snowballs” to the children…
After reading our story, we left the box filled with cotton balls in the center of our circletime/block center floor for the children to explore…
The children came and went from the blizzard box all throughout the morning. We explored how to make cotton ball snow angels in our box…
We found it was best to actually pack the snowballs around our bodies then stand up so we could see the shape left behind…
Our cotton ball blizzard play took on different forms as the children played including building snow forts or caves with our blocks and animals…
All throughout the morning, the children came and went from our cotton ball blizzard box…
The blizzard in the box was only one of the ways we explored cotton ball snowballs so stay tuned for my next post so I can share with you some of the other amazing things we came up with….
And by the way, for those of you with toddlers, I thought you would like to know that my grandson loved the cotton ball blizzard in a box too…
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