Coming back from the winter holidays can be soooooo drab. All of the holiday celebrations are over and the decorations are put away. We miss the glitter so we found the best way to combat the blues is with more blue- and white. As we roll out winter book displays we read about Wilson Bentley the snowflake man and celebrate the beauty of his snowflake photography. There are so many great winter picture books that each year we read a different one to pique interest in snowflakes, but a favorite is Just One Flake. This snow and sweaters choice slide is a great place to start out snowflake studies, too. Then we get to snowflake making!
Each student K-5 creates a flake and I try to hang every single one! We cover how to fold and cut so that the snowflakes are hexagonal just like snowflakes in nature. For kinder, coffee filters are easier to cut, they are also fun to color using markers and then spritz with water for a melting effect. The best part of this year’s snowflakes is that when we hung them all up, I added some small animal pictures in between the flakes to create a huge I spy display. Kids loved trying to find all of the hidden objects! The group in the below pic is recording the number of each item they spotted!
Every January I embark upon a celebration of snowflakes that boggles the minds of most teachers. I LOVE snowflakes, and they have so many interesting science and mathematical connections to make with students of every age! This year I added a google drawing component to my lessons, asking students to learn shortcuts in gsuite as they demonstrated understanding of the structure of a snowflake (hexagonal). Students drew and labeled their flakes- they can be categorized in several ways- and used their newfound techie shortcuts to make fabulous flakes. I shared a google drawing 
the big green bookshelf 