Reading In A Winter Wonderland: The Snow Globe Family

Hello and welcome to the second annual Winter Wonderland link up! At the bottom of all of The Reading Crew’s posts, there is a “map” of the blogs so you can hop through them all at once, visit some today and some later in the week, or see what best matches your literacy needs.

On each blog, we will be sharing a mentor text lesson using the book we’ve chosen. The lesson will be modeling a reading skill (comprehension or writing typically, but some at the primary level may target vocabulary, fluency, or word building). The materials that are shared may be forever freebies or may be free for a limited time. Please take note of this as you visit the blogs.

Again, we welcome you to our blogs and wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season.

Reading In A Winter Wonderland with Ideas by Jivey.

The Snow Globe Family is one of my very favorite books because it reminds me of that anticipation of a coming snow! Here in Georgia, we don’t get snow much (and yes, it often shuts the state down) so anytime the “S-word” is in the forecast, I get very excited!

The Snow Globe Family is an adorable book by Jane O’Connor and illustrated by S.D. Schindler. It tells the story of TWO families- one that lives in a big house on a hill, as well as the family that lives INSIDE the snow globe sitting on their mantle! Everyone in the “big” family has forgotten about the snow globe – everyone except Baby…

My activities are great for first, second, and third graders. There are many similarities between the two families, and that is what you will focus on in this lesson. Before reading, let the students know they should be looking and listening for things that are the same about the two families, either in the text or the illustrations. (There are several similarities!)

One of the things they will notice right away, of course, is how tiny the snow globe family is. I suggest completing the first activity while you read the book the first time. This activity asks the students to note the details (evidence) the author gives to show that the snow globe family is small. This can be done together as you read on a chart, or depending on your students, you might give them the activity page to fill in as you read. The author does a great job describing how small things are in the snow globe, such as their footprints being smaller than sprinkles. After reading the story, either the same day or the next day, complete the Venn diagram to compare the snow globe family and the big family, this time focusing on more than just the size of them. You might want to re-read the story for this activity, or thumb through and show them certain pages, but I would first see what they remember on their own!

This book is perfect to extend into your writing time, too! Students can imagine they were in a snow globe and draw a scene, which would make a great story starter. I have included a page they can use to draw their scene, as well as a lined writing prompt page.

You can also turn this writing activity into an adorable craft! Check out my blog post to see what I did in my fourth grade classroom, which you can easily do in any grade! I took pictures of the students pretending to be in their snow globe. I also traced around a small plastic (clear) plate on construction paper and students illustrated the inside of the circle, complete with their photograph. We dropped some fake snow and glitter flakes (and even some snowflake confetti) onto their illustration, then I hot glued the plate on to the paper for them. The “snow” moved freely around under the plate. My students absolutely loved this project, and it made their writing some of the best they had done all year!

This forever freebie is exclusive to my blog readers only-

it will not be in my TPT store.

Of course, you know me! I can’t integrate this book into reading and writing and leave out GRAMMAR! :o) You can also get this mentor sentence lesson for free for this book. The focus skill is adjectives.