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Are you looking for some fun, hands-on activities to do with your students during the winter months? Crafts are always a great option! In this post, I’m going to share some winter craft ideas for kindergarten that will also help your students practice important content area skills.
As I’ve shared in a post before, there are many benefits of using crafts in kindergarten. However, it can be hard to find the time for craft projects in the jam-packed kindergarten curriculum! That’s why it’s so helpful to use crafts that incorporate other content area practice for your winter lesson plans, like these winter crafts:
After reading “The Mitten” by Jan Brett with your students, you can incorporate a fun subtraction craft into your math lesson plans! Students can practice their fine motor skills by lacing yarn around the paper mitten. Then, they can model subtraction by taking animals out of the mitten.
This adorable snow globe craft is a great companion activity for “The Snow Globe Family” by Jane O’Connor. Students will love to put themselves in a snow globe and then complete a writing activity to go on the back. These completed snow globes can stand up on their own, which makes a fun classroom decoration!
Your students will love to practice their names with this snowman name craft! Students will stack the letters of their name to create a snowman. Once the completed crafts are on display, they’ll love to look for their snowman on the wall! You can also discuss the different name lengths in your classroom. The snowman height is a great way to visualize name length.
Students can practice detailed writing after creating an adorable snowman craft. After assembling a snowman craft, students will describe their snowman with descriptive writing. These make a great winter bulletin board display!
Another fun way to combine writing practice with crafts is this flipbook! Students can write and illustrate the steps for building a snowman on each page of the flipbook. Once it’s complete, students can create a cute snowman craft to use as a topper for their writing. Students are always excited to flip through their completed informative writing.
This snowman craft doubles as a math activity and would be a fun addition to math centers or small group math practice. Students will build snowmen by matching the snowballs with number sentences to the correct snowmen. Students could each complete their own craft to take home, or you could create one laminated copy to use as a reusable math center instead.
If you plan on reading “Tacky the Penguin” with your students this winter, be sure to add this fun companion craft to your lesson plans! Students can practice identifying character traits by writing a sentence about Tacky. They can attach this writing to a fun Tacky the Penguin craft.
After learning all about penguins during a thematic unit, students can document what they’ve learned in this All About Penguins book. As students put together their books, they’ll be able to review important nonfiction text features. For example, they will create a table of contents and complete a labeling activity for the book. Once the pages are complete, students will complete a fun penguin craft to decorate the front cover.
Crafts can also help your students review subtraction! Students will assemble a cute penguin for this craft. Then, they will model a subtraction sentence by putting some fish in the penguin’s stomach and some in the water. Students love to compare their subtraction equations with their friends, which can help them see the different ways to decompose numbers.
This is another fun way for students to share what they’ve learned about penguins. The students will write and illustrate their favorite facts about penguins to include in the book, based on a “Can, Have, Are” discussion from the penguin unit. Students will attach the completed writing to a 3D penguin craft.
Students can also use a snowman craft during math practice. This snowman bead slider is a fun craft for students to make. They can then use the craft to help them practice decomposing numbers. They will take a given number of beads, then slide them up and down the pipe cleaner to discover all of the ways to make that number.
After reading “Snowmen at Night” with your students, they’ll be eager to write a story about what their snowman does at night. Once their illustrated story is complete, they can create a snowman craft for the front cover. They’ll be excited to bring their story to life with a fun craft!
You can also use crafts to enhance your read aloud of “Snowmen All Year” by Caralyn Buehner. This 3D snowman craft includes space for students to write and illustrate what they do with their snowman in each season of the year. These adorable snowmen can stand up on bookshelves or tables for a fun winter classroom decoration.
All of these winter crafts can be found in one easy-to-download bundle of January thematic units for kindergarten. In addition to these fun crafts, this bundle includes math and literacy activities and other themed activities to keep your students engaged in learning during the winter months.
If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included in this money-saving bundle, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or in my TPT store.
Be sure to save these kindergarten winter crafts so you can come back to it later. Just add the pin below to your favorite board of kindergarten crafts. You’ll be able to quickly find these fun ideas when you’re looking for crafts to do with your students this winter.
These alphabet books will have students dive deep into learning about each letter of the alphabet while eager to see what activity they get to complete next!
