Snowman Circle Time Activity

This is an excellent winter circle-time activity for PreK. Preschoolers love to tell you how to do things when they know, and this snowman circle time activity is a directed drawing activity with a twist! Finding ways to make activities as meaningful as possible for my preschoolers is always a top priority, and the twist I added to this directed drawing whole group activity works beautifully! Directed drawing is a wonderful tool to build all kinds of skills, especially listening and executive function skills. Children have to listen and understand the next step as they draw carefully. Add in that pretty much all preschoolers need as much time as they can making marks, using writing and drawing tools, and refining fine motor skills – and this is a win win win activity!

Start with a question. I love questions because they invite participation.

Starting this snowman circle time activity with a question like “How do you build a snowman?” is perfect because 4-5-year-olds know thisbe they won’t have all the details down, but they know enough to be very eager to share. As they share the steps, make motions with them to keep engagement high!

This is a photo from my classroom and all the steps we decided go into making a snowman. Please disregard my handwriting; it’s done quickly while children are answering to keep the circle time activity going at a good pace! The children added many more steps than I anticipated, there is no perfect number of steps, but if you feel your students are adding too many just consolidate when it comes time for drawing. ” Add the face and buttons.” for example.

Snowman Directed Drawing Activity

Now get out the white boards and start drawing! Not just willy-nilly, use the steps you all decided on together.

Since our first steps had to do with gathering snow and making giant snowballs, we acted that part out and started at the “Stack them up” step.

Go through the steps. For quick artists who are waiting for slower friends to finish each step be ready with a few extra items. I suggested that they add snowflakes in the sky. This worked beautifully for keeping a good pace and everyone engaged.

Look at these snowmen!

More importantly, my students are working on important skills, like following directions which is a vital part of developing executive functioning skills. They are also working on handwriting in a fun engaging way by practicing drawing.