by Grace Proefrock “Under the Snow” by Melissa Stewart is a great book to read to your class in the cold winter months. The author dives into the world beneath the snow. This story encourages children to think about what is hiding below the thick snow coat and what they don’t see on the surface. The story is informative and does an excellent job of encouraging the reader to want to know more. The illustrations are very detailed showing what it would really look like below the snow. This story is great for all ages and so many fun activities can be done using the content in the book. Many ideas come to mind when thinking about how you can bring this book to life in your classroom. Something that could be fun and engaging for your students could be to construct your own “world beneath the snow”. Assign small groups of students an animal or an insect and have them create a visual of what this animal does beneath the snow. Make a layer of snow using white paper and cotton balls and hang this somewhere in your room. Have the students put their creations underneath the snow with labels and some descriptive words. For example, if one group is assigned a squirrel, they could cut and color a picture of a squirrel and make some acorns to show the squirrel eating its winter stash of nuts. Once complete, you will have a great visual to refer to when learning about hibernating animals throughout the winter months. Another activity that could be done using this book could be to have the students create a picture story about what they do when there is snow on the ground. Have the students write and draw about different activities they do when snow is on the ground. They can show themselves building a snowman, making snow angels, and having snowball fights. This activity could be modified for all grade levels. If you have younger students, they could focus more on drawing pictures and writing small sentences about what they do in the snow. If you have older students, you could have them do more descriptive writing about the activities they do in the winter. (If you live somewhere where it does not snow, you could have the students brainstorm first what they would do if they went somewhere with snow.) Overall, this story takes your readers on an informative journey through the world beneath the snow. It is full of beautiful illustrations of winter creatures. Melissa Stewart has many other incredible stories that can be used in your classroom to help students learn about all kinds of different kinds of things. I encourage you to look at her website to find more stories and activities related to the natural world. Melissa Stewart's website: https://www.melissa-stewart.com/books/books.html
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