Couldn’t resist creating an art project based on the book Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Beuhner. I read the story to my first grade students and then we got busy creating a dark night sky with either tissue paper skyscrapers or houses in the background.
Mod-Podge kept everything in place and added a nice little sheen. The next time we met, the first graders drew a snowman on their white paper snowbank and filled the snowman’s belly with white paint. Painted paper hats, scarves and mitts kept the snowman toasty warm.
I learned a few tips from one of my other snowman projects, Tissue Paper Snowman. The layer of Mod-Podge (watered down slightly) prevents the tissue paper from bleeding through to the snowman.
I know in Tissue Paper Snowman, I used liquid starch to apply the tissue paper. Mod-Podge works better for this project. As an added precaution, or if you want to use liquid starch to apply the tissue paper, color in the snowman with a white oil pastel before painting. Again, this eliminates any tissue bleeding.
First Grade Snowman
Aren’t these adorable? I’ll be doing this one again.
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Oooooooo, I just love the pix and the book is just right too! Thanks Patty!
I’m doing this lesson currently. My kinders LOVE it! 🙂
These are BEAUTIFUL! I’m going to do these in January. Thank you!!
❀Barbara❀
Grade ONEderful
I’m curious. How long are your class sessions? I have 40 minute once a week class sessions so for me, with reading the book, discussion of the illustrations, demonstration, gathering materials, etc. It works out to be about a 3 day project. How long did this take you to finish?
I have 45 minutes with my first grade students. On the first day we read the book, applied tissue paper onto blue paper (some were pre-cut into rectangles, but most were manageable sizes), added the moon and blanket of snow. Brushed on Mod-podge with bog brushes.
Second class we drew the snowman, colored him in and painted. Added snowflakes and colored paper for details.
All but a few finished the project. I keep ’em moving! About 25 kids per class.
I have used Caralyn Beuhner’s book Snowmen at Night with my kinders in art class. We have two copies of the book in our school library and I use one in the art room and I pass the second book to the kinder classroom teachers and they are glad to read the book aloud to their class before their students come to art class. That helps to save art time. I send the teachers an email that I would like them to read the book ahead of time so they are able to work it in their lessons plans. I also tell them that if you don’t have time to read the book, that is OK, I will summarize the story when the students come to art. I put a sticky note on the back of the book with the teachers name and the date that I would like them to read the book by. I have not tried the tissue paper houses in the background. I love that idea and plan to try it in January. I am planning on just using school glue on the tissue paper because that is what we have. I’ll try it first to see if the tissue will bleed through into the paint. Thanks for the idea!
I love the little snowmen – how cute!
i did this in class with my grade 1/2’s a few weeks ago, only we used plasticine instead of paint. Great idea!
We did this project with 2 home school art classes ages 5-6 and 7-9. We only have 40 minutes per class. We ended up needing 3 classes to complete the picture. T
hey turned out wonderfully! The kids were so proud and the parents pleased with the results. Thank you so much for making such great activities accessible to even “non-artistic” teachers. I recommend Deep Space Sparkle to everyone that loves kids and art.
Last year I painted snowmen with my 2nd graders. I used a 50/50 mix of shaving cream and white glue, and the added some white iredescent glitter. The pain/glue dries puffy and it turned out so good!
Hi again! I’ve actually been teaching this variant on your lesson for two years now, but only just got around to remembering to take pictures and post them. You can check out my shout out to you here: http://onepointsperspective.blogspot.com/2012/12/ode-to-deep-space-sparkle-or-how-i.html
I love this project but had a strange thing happen to me last week; I work in two schools–one with an older heating system with typical “blowers” under the windows to heat the room–the other with a more updated even heating system that is always warm or a good temp…the more updated room had MAJOR problems with liquid starch application–it was drying before adhering to the paper and all the tissue paper fell off. Really quite funny upon looking back on it, although my poor little first graders in that one class will have to repeat this step…(after this disaster class occurred, I switched over to Mod Podge!)
Just an FYI for those with very dry/warm classrooms!!
Yikes…that’s a hard situation to deal with! I’m with you, as much as I like liquid starch, it has properties that make it hard to control at times. Thanks for the feedback!
This looks fantastic!! I am too a grade 1 teacher- just one question? For the hats and scarves what did you use?
Thanks a ton
Hi Donna!
I used paper form my scrap paper box…looks like some leftover scrapbook craft paper.
May I ask how I can get the whole lesson for this activity? I just love this idea. We do projects so the kids can learn about different techniques.
Hi Erica! There isn’t a full lesson plan for the Snowmen at Night lesson. If you are a Sparkler there are two Snowman full lesson plans inside The Sparklers’ Club as well as thousands more amazing full-length lessons and resources. For more information or to join our waitlist click here https://deepspacesparkle.lpages.co/the-sparklers-club-waitlist/
I love this project! I can’t wait to do this for my holiday art camp. It’s very rich and textured and gives kids the right balance of structure and freedom. Thank you!
Great winter projects that are non-religious. Absolutely loved the book choices too for the wonderful winter projects. But I would really love some great ideas for religious Christmas and Easter creative art projects for elementary k-5. I only found one on line that was beautiful of a manger scene.