Snowy Book Club: The Snowy Day, No Two Alike and Snowmen at Night

Our Mommy and Me Book Club is small (mostly because I wanted to include all the kids in Caroline's class at church and if we invited the class above or below her age, then, well, it would be huge.) Our numbers are usually 3 or 4 kids and their moms each week with the occasional 5-6 kid day and younger siblings thrown in too. I like it when there are 4-5 kids. More friends just make all the activities I plan more fun, I think! I loved having 2 newbies this week since Cl and Ce had never been before. They fit right into our play!

We started off with No Two Alike and the kids loved it! We talked about what makes US unique and special while still finding commonalities we share with others. An adorable book and the kiddos loved taking turns finding animals on the page. 

From that bird/snow book, it was a natural transition to felt/finger play: 

2 Little Blackbirds

Two Little Blackbirds sitting on a hill (hold 2 fingers in front of you, one from each hand)

One named Jack, one named Jill (lift one pointer finger and then the other)

Fly away Jack (hand behind back)

Fly away Jill (other hand behind back)

come back Jack (hand comes back to front)

come back Jill (other hand comes back)

Two little blackbirds sitting on a hill. 

One named Jack, one named Jill.

 We did 3 verses (hill= jack and jill, cloud = quiet and loud, snow = fast and slow). It can be chanted or even sung.

The kids really got into this and loved doing the hand motions along with the poem. When I'm doing the felt I never take pictures, so this pic is afterwards during free play when the kids wanted to do the felt story themselves. 

Our next book was The Snowy Day. Some of the kids had read this book before and were quick to tell me how it ends (with the snowball melting in his pocket) before we even got to that point in the story. 

We sang "Snowflake, Snowflake, Little Snowflake" from Super Simple Songs (the video is adorable and you must go watch it with your kids if you haven't yet) and used our foam snowflakes to 

dance with while we sang. After they were sort of familiar with the song, each child got to choose where they wanted the snowflake to fall. We actually did this AGAIN when Gwen got home from Kinder. She wanted the snowflake to fall on her nose. :) (ps. Mommy, this photo is for you-- bc you said you wanted to see what she looks like with tooth #7 lost)

Of course, we had to have a snowstorm at the end with snowflakes falling everywhere!

Caroline tried to rescue the fallen flakes and put them back with their 'families'. :)

I was planning to read Snowmen at Night last, but actually ended up omitting it because the attention of the kids was waning (new kids and younger siblings, ya know. Gotta be flexible!). I opted to include Once There Was a Snowman song I'd planned to follow the book because I thought the kids would love it. And they did! I think we sang it 4 or 5 times! It was a great way to end the circle time.

They are melting... it happens a lot faster in song than in real life! :)

We made name snowmen for our craft (I guided their hands to write their names on each circle, then they glued them on and added snowman features and snow)

 I like that Caroline's snowman has feet... She is so funny!

  We finished off the book club with homemade frozen yogurt. The kids that got here early helped me make it and it was ready right about the time we were finished with everything. Perfect ending!

I loved the creativity displayed during free play--- Cl insisted that his train was driving through a snow storm. He wanted me to take a picture of his handy work. :)

We had a great time! I can hardly wait for our next book club on Penguins! :)