One of our very favorite books for the winter season is the classic picture book Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner. If you haven’t read Snowmen at Night yet, I highly recommend checking it out at your local library! It’s a fun story about what snowmen do while the world is asleep. The snowmen come alive at night and do all kinds of fun snowman activities – like sledding, snowball fights, and snowman races. It’s a great book to enjoy on a snowy day, and I have a great way to enhance the fun. To make storytime even more special for our homeschool, I created a fun Snowmen at Night craft to do with my kids.
This Snowmen at Night craft is a perfect activity for a party, for storytime, for inspiration for a creative writing project, or just for fun! It is a cute craft to introduce a snowman unit for preschool or to teach the sound of the letter S to younger students. We loved it because it is easy prep and it is an edible craft, so there is no leftover clutter when the fun is done! My kids really got into this. The craft was a hit with all of them – from the 3 year-old all the way up to the 16 year-old. I guess it helped that it was made from ice cream and candy! Please read on for instructions on how to make your own snowman craft and for ideas of effective extension activities to go along with it.
Materials for the Edible Snowmen at Night Craft
All the materials you need for this Snowmen at Night craft are edible! You might have many of them on hand already. Because most of the materials needed are for decorating your snowmen, you can substitute any of them for what you have in your home or classroom, or whatever is convenient for you to get at the store. This is a suggested list – feel free to use what you like!
- Ice cream scoop – you will want this so that you can make nice round balls of ice cream
- Vanilla ice cream – you can use whatever flavor you prefer, but I wanted our snowmen to look like snowmen, so we used vanilla
- Mini chocolate chips – for eyes
- Fruit leather strips – for scarves. I used a 100% fruit variety to try to minimize food dye.
- Thin peanut butter cups – for hats
- Rolos – also for hats
- Candied orange slices, candy corn, or any other soft orange candy – cut them up to use for a carrot nose
- Poky or Nutella sticks – for arms
Preparing Your Edible Snowmen at Night Craft
The preparation for the edible Snowman at Night craft is really simple and quick! Before the kids begin making their cute crafts, read Snowmen at Night aloud to them.
- Scoop ice cream balls onto a freezer-safe tray or muffin tin and put them back in the freezer. This step is essential to the success of your craft! If you skip it, your ice cream balls will be too melty and your edible Snowman at Night craft will be a mess. Which kind of fits with the story … but might not be so fun for the kids!
- You will need 2-3 ice cream balls per child. Try to make them as round as you can and vary the sizes a little so that you have smaller ice cream balls for the heads. If you are doing this with a small group of children, you will need about a half gallon of ice cream. This will be enough for 8-10 children. If you are using this activity for a larger party, you will probably need a gallon or more of ice cream.
- Let the ice cream balls harden in the freezer for at least an hour. Longer will be better. Don’t skip this step!
- Lay out all the ingredients for your snowmen. Make sure everything is ready before you take the “snow balls” out of the freezer.
- If you put the ice cream balls on a metal or glass dish, be sure to use oven mitts when removing it from the freezer. I don’t want anyone to get freezer burn!
- Give each child two to three ice cream balls and have them stack them up like a snowman.
- Now it’s time to decorate! This part is great practice for the fine motor skills. Let your kids get creative and have so much fun making faces and clothes for their snowmen.
- Don’t forget to take a picture of the snowmen before you eat them!
Look at these fun snowmen!
Writing Activities to go with the Snowman at Night Craft
Once your edible snowmen are complete, you can begin a fun Snowmen at Night writing activity while your children are eating them. This is not necessary to do – you can do the Snowman at Night craft just for the joy of it! But the craft can get the creative juices flowing, and you can capitalize on that if you would like to. Below are some suggestions for extensions activities that you can do along with the Snowman at Night craft.
S is for Snowman
If you have younger students, you can briefly introduce the letter S and it’s sound. You can simply write the letter S on a piece of paper or on a white board, and tell your child that S says “s” like the sound at the beginning of snowman. Have the children practice saying the sound while lookling at the letter.
Describe Your Snowman
The Snowman at Night craft is a great activity for getting kids to think about adjectives. As your children are eating their snowmen, explain what an adjective is and ask them what words they would use to describe their snowmen. Help them use their imaginations to move past obvious adjectives like cold and white.
Snowman Shape Poem
The Snowman at Night story is actually a poem! Have your kids make a poem of their own in the shape of a snowman! You can use the Describe Your Snowman activity above to help generate good adjectives to use in the poem.
Snowman at Night Adventure
Make up a little adventure to add to the snowman at night story! This can be done orally. You can brainstorm with your child about what else snowmen might do at night and have her dictate the story to you while you write it down.
I hope you had fun with this Snowman at Night craft! Thank you for visiting! Please come again!
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