Snow Globe Writing for Big Kids: Trapped in a Snow Globe

This snow globe writing activity is made for big kids. Students imagine they’re trapped inside a snow globe (or maybe they live there on purpose!) and write a story with a real problem and a real solution. Here’s how I set it up with my class, including the free graphic organizer we used to plan.

We started our writing time with Knick Knack, a Pixar short about a snowman stuck inside a snow globe. It’s so cute, and it gets kids thinking about what life in a snow globe would really be like.

After the short, students turned and talked with a partner about what it would be like to be trapped in a snow globe. Or maybe they weren’t “trapped” at all! Maybe they just lived there, but ran into ANOTHER problem inside the snow globe. Here are some of the ideas my students came up with:

• It’s always cold.
• I have no friends because I’m in there by myself.
• Someone put a spell on me and put me in a snow globe.
• People keep looking in at me with their big eyes! (My favorite.)

Once students had some ideas rolling around, I gave them a graphic organizer to start brainstorming.

I wanted these stories to have action! I didn’t want to read 25 stories about what a snow globe looks like and who lives there and they play together and THE END.

We had talked about how, in a shorter narrative, the problem usually happens around the middle and the solution comes toward the end. So instead of beginning, middle, and end, the organizer says introduction, problem, and solution, to remind students they NEED a conflict and a resolution.

For the setting, students drew what they wanted their snow globe to look like and labeled it with important words to use in their story.

Free graphic organizer: plan a snow globe story with an introduction, problem, solution, characters, and setting.

Download the free organizer

One year, I had students revise their snow globe stories by adding one idiom. So many of their characters felt scared or nervous about being trapped, so I picked idioms about those feelings, like “butterflies in my stomach” and “have cold feet.” You can see those idiom posters and how students took notes on them in my idioms post.

When students finished their stories, I took a photo of each one, and they made the snow globe they described to display with their published writing. That’s the bulletin board at the top of this post. You can see how we made them, plus a figurative language snow globe craft to go with the writing, in my figurative language snow globe post.

Here are some finished stories from one of my classes, hung with the snow globes students made of themselves: