We had our first snowfall last week! Glorious, white, sticky snow. Enough to shovel and slide a toboggan over. We have been learning vocabulary in French to describe the weather as well as identifying winter clothing, so the students were really excited to be able to put it all into practice outside while playing and later inside, during their writer’s workshop period.
In the morning, instead of the usual buckets, shovels and dumptrucks, we hauled out a collection of toboggans and shovels our school had bought a few years prior to Full Day Kindergarten. (The winter equipment must have been on a wishlist of a kinder teacher who has since moved on, but to whom we are very thankful!) Curricula, such as language and science, as well as physical and health education, were accessed in multiple ways that morning as the students pulled, piled, rolled, and slid on the snow, and then later wrote about their day.

It is not surprising, I suppose, that not all children loved the snow. I could generalize and say that it tended to be the ones who were not dressed warmly enough for the weather – there certainly were a few who forgot snow pants or splash pants – however, one or two seemed to have an opinion about snow that I thought only adults would express; “I don’t like snow because it’s cold and winter is long.” So, although this statement is true, and I understand there are some people who really do not like snow or winter, I feel hopeful that opinions such as this, coming from a 5 year old, may be changed with a more positive representation of what is a reality in Canada for five months of the year.

 
One aspect of the Overall Expectation in the science curriculum is for children to “demonstrate an understanding of the natural world and the need to care for and respect the environment.” With this in mind, and with the hope that we can foster a group of learners who love being outside in the snow just as much as we do, we have also talked about how different living things prepare for the winter; losing their leaves, dying off (annual plants in the garden), getting thicker coats, hibernating, flying south, digging deep in the mud under a lake, etc. We read books and sing songs about winter, winter clothing, and winter weather – Youtube has a vast collection to choose from – and set out activities where students can draw winter scenes with white crayons on blue construction paper, cut up paper snowflakes or make snowflakes on mirror tiles with straws, cotton balls and blue glass beads.

 
Being aware of the natural environment is also an expectation of the science curriculum, and so, sharing the Scandinavian expression, “There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing,” offers the students the opportunity to explore what that might mean and why it is a common saying in a cold part of the world. To delve deeper into snow-based culture, we have invited presenters from the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre to present clothing and tools and teach Inuit games to our kindergarten students. We are hopeful that if the students become aware of all the children, just like them, who live in a snowy world for a much longer period of the year, they will see how it is necessary for us to become more connected to our environment so that we can adapt and live within it, rather than try to avoid it.

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