“Waiting for Snow” by Marsha Diane Arnold and Renata Liwska
As I’ve mentioned before, we are kind of enamored by the first snow of the year over here. However, it hasn’t happened yet and sometimes it can feel like it’s taking forever to come. Especially for little ones who want to go sledding and build snowmen. This book is a lovely story about some woodland animals who are waiting for the first snow to come. And no one is more so than Badger. All the animals to everything they can think of to get snow to come, including a snow dance, but nothing works. They even try to please Badger by shaking sugar from his roof outside in imitation of snow. Eventually they realize that they just have to wait and in the end their wish is granted. This is such an adorable book and the illustrations, as can be expected from Renata are whimsically beautiful.
Click here to purchase “Waiting for Snow” *affiliate link
Beyond the Book Craft and Activity
I thought that it might be fun to create an activity for this book for all the eager kiddos who just can’t wait for snow to come. I mean, if you can’t play with real snow, why not do some imaginative play right?! I got the idea for this craft and activity from the part in the story where Badger’s friends try and surprise him by shaking sugar off his roof in imitation of snow. Inspired by that illustration/scene I thought it could be fun to make a little village of houses and invite my child to shake sugar over the village to make it “snow”. The craft part of this tutorial are adorable little paper houses that we painted and assembled for our village. The whole thing wound-up being a huge success with my toddler.
Supplies:
- Deep box lid or shallow box
- Scissors
- Glue Stick
- Water Colors/Brush/Water
- Paper House Template (I used this adorable free printable one from Craft and Creativity. You could use a different style if you prefer, but I thought these were particularly adorable. If you want to use them too then CLICK HERE to head on over to her blog and snag one.
- Crinkle Paper (I used it as a base for snow in my scene. You could also go “all out” with the sugar and just pour a bunch in instead.)
- Salt Shaker (filled with sugar)
- Glitter
- Any other decorations you want to use. I found these two plastic trees at my local Dollar Store. Just the right size and they even light up! Bottle-brush trees would be fun though too, especially because the sugar might catch on the branches. Be creative and have fun!
Steps:
- Print out the paper house templates of your choice. (Five worked well for the box I used.)
- Paint them with water colors and wait for them to dry.
- Cut them out.
- Glue them together following the instructions at Craft and Creativity.
- Set them up in your box with your fake snow and other village items. Then have at it with shaking sugar over the top!
- I love a little sparkle so we also smeared some glue with our glue stick along the tops of the roofs and shook glitter snow over as well. They made for cute decorations afterwards.
My toddler loved this set up so much that he even ran up to his play room to get his little plastic Curious George and a few other characters to do imaginative play in his wintery village. It made me so happy to see him having so much fun.
If you give this Beyond the Book activity a try I’d love to hear how it goes! Share it on Instagram using hashtag #beyondthebook (I’m on Instagram as @book.nerd.mommy) or even just comment here with your thoughts. It would make my day! Or to simply save for later pin the image below.
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