Grades
K - 12
Teach Science With These Fun Winter Activities
Experiment with phases of matter and crystal formation while making snowmen — without any snow!
States of matter can be a tricky topic to broach with young students. Your students may quickly grasp the properties of solids and liquids, but gas is tougher, and phase changes are often confusing. However, elementary teacher Meghan Everette recommends three fun snowman activities for integrated lessons on matter phases that will make learning stick.
To start, show your students objects, such as a stapler, a bottle of water, and an air-filled balloon. Ask them to describe the differences between them. Beyond naming simple physical attributes, students should be able to identify that some things are hard and others are liquid, and the balloon is filled with air.
Now that you’ve introduced the basics of matter, dive deeper into solids, liquids, and gasses with the easy-to-understand nonfiction books below before moving on to the activities.
True Books have been upgraded and updated. Information is presented in a thorough yet engaging manner, featuring lively sidebars, a glossary, visual back matter, and an index.
Rookie Read-About® Science brings a broad array of topics to vibrant life with striking, full-color photos and just the right amount of fun, factual, fascinating text.
Evaporation, condensation, capillary action, and surface tension are explained through simple text and illustrated by pictures that reveal water in its many awesome transformations.
Colorful photos, diagrams, and easy to comprehend fact-filled text reveal the secrets of water and how we can protect it as a life-giving resource.
Simple descriptions of water in some of its many liquid and frozen solid forms, such as rain, tap water, frost, rivers, and icebergs, are accompanied by vivid photographs contrasting the larger concept with a familiar sight that children will easily identify.
A field guide offering beginning naturalists easy-to-use, visually stunning resources to help them observe and investigate rocks and minerals.
Glass can be melted and shaped. See how sand can be turned into a glass fish!
After reading about the states of matter, ask your students how you could create a snowman — without any snow. Many of their suggestions may revolve around reshaping ice. Show them three balloons of various sizes and guide them toward the realization that filling the balloons with liquid and freezing them will make the three balls you need to build a snowman.
Now it’s time to experiment!
Fill balloons of three different sizes with water and place the balloons in a freezer with a plate or book on top to help make a flat surface on the balloons (for stability when stacking).
To assemble the snowman, unwrap the ice balls from the balloons and add salt, which helps the ice stick together. (Older students can learn about salt’s ability to melt ice.)
Place the snowman in a bin to collect the water as it melts. As you add the salt, you can dress and decorate the snowman with felt pieces.
Every two hours (or as the school day allows), record the snowman’s height, the water level in the bucket, and the time of each observation on the whiteboard. Students should also record what they saw. (Note: If your freezer temperatures are especially low, your snowman may survive most of the day.)
Discuss how the snowman started off as a liquid, turned solid in the freezer, but then melted back into a liquid. During each observation session, your students should practice making predictions by determining what will happen next. Most students might not guess that as the snowman melts, the head will fall off first!
After the snowman melts, have your students predict how long it will take for the leftover water to evaporate from the bucket as the liquid transforms into a gas. Another option is to put the water in a crockpot and heat it to see steam form. At the end of the experiment, you can put the snowman back in the freezer to see if he reforms. Your students will learn that liquid always takes the shape of its container.
Conclude by having your students write about the states of matter and the life cycle of a snowman.
Another fun feature of the phases of matter is how different mixtures and solutions can yield different results. Students can experience this firsthand by creating different substances from solids and liquids.
First, have students combine cornstarch and conditioner to make a simple, smelly play dough.
Mix: 1 cup conditioner (scent of choice) + 2 cups cornstarch
Discuss the properties of cornstarch and how a powder behaves more like a liquid than a solid. After students have created their mixture, they should see that they can’t undo the creation, thus learning about the permanent nature of solutions.
For the next solution, combine cornstarch and a small amount of water.
Mix: 1 cup water + 1.5 to 2 cups cornstarch
This mixture results in an unusual plasma that looks and will slowly leak and pour like a liquid. But scooping up the substance makes it behave like a solid that can be formed into a ball, cut with a knife, or broken into pieces. At rest, the goo slides back together. Voilà! Your students have created a “non-Newton liquid”, due to varying pressures of cornstarch grains.
Teacher tip: Warm water will clean most of this up, and dry cornstarch mix brushes away easily.
Once students know the basics of matter, it’s time for an experiment in crystallization!
Make snowmen shapes out of pipe cleaners and suspend them in a tub of Borax dissolved in water. A ratio of three tablespoons of Borax to one cup of water works well when mixed in a large container. Suspend the pipe cleaners in the mixture overnight, and crystals will have formed by morning. The crystals are hard and will retain their new, solid form when removed from the water. Students will be amazed to see a liquid form a solid — without using a freezer!
These phases of matter experiments will fascinate and mystify your students. Plus, when you combine meaningful, hands-on lessons with a dash of winter magic, you’ll keep your students engaged long after science lessons are over.
Shop books about winter-related science below! You can find all books and activities at The Teacher Store.
Vivid photographs of frozen wonderlands and cold-weather fun come together in a lively tribute to winter by an acclaimed author-photographer.
Everyone loves snow! It's fun to play in and makes wonderful snowmen. But where does snow come from? The answer is at your fingertips. Just open this book and read about the wonders of snow....
Discover the wonder and activity that lies beneath winter's snowy landscape in this magical book.
On a bright, snowy day George builds a snowman that magically comes to life to share a snack and have a snowball fight with George. In this original tale, Tegen captures the magic of the snowman, while Dorman's beautiful illustrations truly bring him to life.
Our heroes' entry for the snowman contest has magically come to life―and ran away! Can YOU help catch it?
Straightforward text and full color photographs provide an engaging introduction to the natural world of ice. Includes comprehension questions.
How do snow crystals form? What shapes can they take? Are no two snow crystals alike? These questions and more are answered in this visually stunning exploration of the science of snow. Perfect for reading on winter days, the book features photos of real snow crystals in their beautiful diversity.
This bundled-up gal isn't playing in the snow; she's slurping it up as fast as she can. Raccoons, reindeer, and bears look on with stunned amazement as she gobbles up even stranger items like a pipe, a scarf, two lumps of coal, and even the branches of a tree. What could she possibly be up to? What do all of these items add up to?
The Mayor of Mouseville announces a contest, awarding a prize to whomever builds the biggest snowman. Clayton and Desmond race against the clock to compete for the prize, only to discover that by working together, they can build the biggest snowman ever!
Wake up with Peter to a snow-covered day where adventure awaits.
What does a snowman like to eat? Snowball soup, of course! Join Little Critter®, Little Sister, and Dog as they make their new friend a tasty treat.
When school is cancelled after a heavy snowfall, Little Critter wants to build a snowman, but first he has to help his little sister and his father, and then his friends want him to join them in the winter fun they prefer.
A snowman who finds it dreadfully cold keeps doing things that cause him to melt, while the children who rebuild him each time offer clothing to keep him warm.
One wintry day, a hat lands on the head of a newly made snowman and brings him to life. Hiding inside the hat is a rabbit, who listens to the snowman read a story to some animal friends. When the snowman falls asleep, the rabbit hops away with the book. The chase is on!
From building snowmen to drinking hot chocolate by the fire's warm glow, Let It Snow celebrates wonders of winter!
When two children wake up to find that it has snowed, they spend the day riding sleds, building snowmen, making snow angels, skating a figure eight, and even taking a break to make gingerbread cookies with grandma. It's a day filled with wonderful wintry fun!
