Montessori Snowflake Bentley Activities

I was trying to do my best to encourage it to snow this winter, I can’t believe it, this might be the first time in the 12 years I’ve lived in Charlottesville, that it hasn’t snowed (this post has been sitting one my computer for two weeks, since then two snows have come and gone!).

Montessori snowflake matching work

So, while I was still holding out for the fluffy white stuff (and really, the snow day that accompanies it) I did a little two-day unit with my kindergarteners about snowflakes.

We started by reading the ever wonderful book Snowflake Bentley. The first day I read just the story. The second afternoon, I had the children retell me the story, and then we read the facts about Snowflake Bentley, which are sidebars on most of the pages in the book.

Snowflake Bentley (Caldecott Medal Book)

Since I’m not always the most prepared teacher, during my lunch break the day I wanted to present a new material, I went to make these lovely snowflake matching cards available from Laura at My Montessori Journey. Whoops, I didn’t realize that they were not available to download from her blog, and was supposed to email her ahead of time for the file. Trying to recover, I did a quick google search, a couple of test prints, and came up with the following two sets.

Montessori snowflake matching work

Mine are slightly different from Laura’s, I don’t have one large control card, rather I made all of my separate. You can download my cards here, or be sure to email Laura at My Montessori Journey for her less slapdash version! Click to download the Word version of these snowflakes here. You can resize the smaller snowflakes, I tried a few different sized before I found what I like

Finally, each kindergartener made their own snowflake. We started with three pipe cleaners (because snowflakes usually have six arms) and twisted the pipe cleaners together. Most of the children were able to do this independently, some still need a little help.

Then we tied a string to the snowflake, and to a popsicle stick, and placed them in a cup of Borax solution. We added about 3 tablespoons of Borax per cup, and then stirred in hot water.

Montessori snowflake matching work

The snowflakes sat over night, and by the next afternoon, each kindergartener had their own snowflake! I am terrible at final product pictures, but the snowflakes did turn out pretty well. It was great to talk about how they were each similar, but unique — just like real snowflakes!

I have some exciting news to share later this week, stay tuned! Sign-up to receive montessori works post by email!

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4 Comments

  1. I love that book! I got to see Bentley’s actual photographs at a natural history museum in VT and they are amazing. Snowflakes are one of my favorite natural wonders!

  2. Bonjour, j’ai tenté de télécharger «flocons de neige ici» les images mais ça ne fonctionne pas. Pouvez-vous m’aider, car j’aimerais beaucoup le faire avec mes cocos 🙂 merci

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