Have kindergartners make winter poetry notebooks. Invite students to make torn paper winter collages for the front cover. Have students choral read winter poems written on large sheets of chart paper. Provide students with smaller copies of winter poems to place in poetry notebooks. Allow students to create pieces of art to include with each poem. After reading "A Chubby Little Snowman," encourage students to make a lift-the-flap illustration. Draw a snowman with a carrot nose on a flap, then underneath the flap the snowman missing his nose with a rabbit sitting nearby eating a carrot.
Set a bowl of ice cubes out on a table and place another bowl under a lamp. Invite kindergartners to predict which bowl of ice cubes will melt first and let them check to see what happens during the day. Experiment with placing tap water and salt water in ice cube trays and placing trays in a freezer to see which tray turns to ice first. Have kindergartners place ice cubes on four different plates. Sprinkle 1 tsp. of different substances on each plate, such as salt, sand, sugar and pepper. Observe which substances melt the ice cubes the quickest.
Put a winter-themed slant on your daily calendar routines. Have students put together a monthly calendar using alternating colors of paper mittens to show the days of the month. Graph the number of days it is cloudy, rainy, snowy, windy or sunny during the winter months. Hang a teddy bear outline and invite kindergartners to use paper clothes to dress the bear based on the weather outside. Practice reading sight words with winter rebus sentences such as "It is snowing" or "I need my mittens." Use pictures for the words "snowing" and "mittens."
Print 10 to 12 pictures of snowflakes that are similar but slightly different. Photocopy one snowflake so there is one identical pair. Mix up the snowflakes and see if students can find the two that are the same. Print snowflake mazes, winter hidden picture games, and winter word searches. Allow students to play memory games with pairs of mittens, snowmen, skis, sleds and other winter items for students to match. Let kindergartners draw winter pictures and laminate. Cut pictures into puzzle shapes so students can trade winter puzzles with classmates.