Perfect Snow Book and Craft

momstown's curriculum theme this month has been "Winter Wonderland". We have sung winter songs ("I'm a Little Snowman" was a favourite), planted indoor snowflakes, made paper mittens, and read many wonderful books about the season. One of the highlights of every month though is when we get to read our Scholastic Canada book of the month. We are so fortunate to have Scholastic choose and provide a book to us each month that relates to our theme. The selections are always wonderful, and at the end of storytime one lucky family gets to go home with the book. 

This month, our Scholastic book of the month was "Perfect Snow", by Barbara Reid.  If you are not familiar with Barbara Reid, she is a Canadian children's book author and illustrator who creates the pictures in her books entirely out of Plasticine.  According to the Scholastic website, each individual Plasticine illustration can take more than seven days to finish, and weigh up to three kilograms.  To protect the illustrations before they are turned into photographs for her books, each is stored in its own separate pizza box.  The result of this unique Plasticine technique are books with pictures that are unlike anything else you have seen.  Colourful, detailed, and captivating they make you want to look at them over and over again.

"Perfect Snow", illustrated in Barbara Reid's signature Plasticine style, is no exception.  The pictures alone will easily hold the attention of most children, but we loved the story too. It's the  tale of two separate boys who wake up to fresh snow.  One boy decides to try and build the perfect snowman during break at school, and the second tries to build a perfect snow fort.  In the end, the two boys join forces to create "The World's Greatest Totally Massive Snowman Fort". If you would like to find out more about the story, you can read momstown's review as well. Congratulations to Heather, brand new big sister Hailey, and baby Jake, who were the lucky winners of this perfect book to snuggle up and read together.

To go along with the story, C. and I worked on a perfect snow craft of our own.  I cut three large green triangles and three snall brown rectangles out of construction paper.  C. then used a glue stick to glue them to a piece of blue paper to create trees.  If you  have a preschooler, this would be a great time to talk about shapes, and let  her practice her scissor skills:

Once the glue was dry, I put a small amount of white paint onto a yogurt container lid (our art palettes of choice), and gave C. a cotton ball.  He had a great time dipping the cotton ball into the paint, and then stamping it onto the paper to create snow:

Of course, you could use a cotton swab, or even your fingers to paint too.  Whether the snow is outside your winter, inside a book, or on a piece of paper, I hope you enjoy it snow too!