In this blog post, we have a free My Snow Globe worksheet to work on self regulation and emotions with kids. What does winter mean to you? Hot chocolate, snowball fights, snuggling by a warm fire? Use the My Snow Globe free worksheet to create a magical winter scene! Students (and caregivers) can use this downloadable worksheet to draw and create their vision of winter.
I imagine students from all over the globe have different visions of winter. Growing up in New England it was sledding, skiing, snowmen, skating, and climbing in the snow piles. Now that we live down south, a cold day means temperatures below 70 degrees. Most of my students have no idea what any of the above winter activities are, other than seeing them in movies or books.
This is a great activity for an emotions check in or a feelings check in activity with kids!
My Snow globe activity is great for checking in with how kids feel on the inside.
My Snow Globe Worksheet
Check out some snowflake activities or some of the fun snow and ice activities for hands-on sensory motor activities to go along with this snowglobe worksheet on the OT Toolbox. Other ideas include our snowman crafts and activities or snowball activities. The snow globe worksheet is a great addition to Winter fine motor activities in general!
We also have these snow globe activities to pair with the worksheet:
- Free Deep Breathing Exercise: Snow Globe Self Regulation activity
- Free Printable Snow Globe Letter Puzzles
- There are also many snow globe activities inside The OT Toolbox membership.
The My Snow Globe worksheet is a pretty simple activity.
Draw a winter scene, then describe it on the lines at the bottom. You can keep it very simple; just present the “My Snow Globe” worksheet and ask students to get started, or get creative.
There can be endless variations to this project:
- What does winter look like to you?
- How you imagine winter
- Where you would like to be during winter
- A favorite winter memory
- The best/worst part of winter
- Something unique about winter in a different country
- Winter in the artic with polar bears and penguins
- A scene from Alaska with glaciers and ice fishing
How to adapt and modify the My Snow Globe Activity
Our learners are not one size fits all, therefore lesson plans are not either. This does not mean 100 different activities each week, but finding ways to modify a singular task to meet the needs of several of your students.
- Students can glue items onto their “my snow globe page” to create a winter scene. Cotton balls, pom poms, glitter, sequins, foam snowflakes, and other craft items will make a very cute snow globe. Head to the craft store or check out inexpensive supplies on Amazon (affiliate links). Check out this glitter snow!
- Lower-level or younger students can dictate what they want written under their snow globe, whereas higher level learners will write lists or sentences.
- Higher level students can turn this into a book cover for a report on winter.
- Make this part of a larger lesson plan including gross motor, sensory, social, executive function, or other fine motor skills.
- Enlarging the picture or lines may be necessary for beginning handwriting students who need bigger space to write.
- Project this page onto a smart board for students to brainstorm as a group
- Different levels or types of prompting may be needed to grade the activity to make it easier or harder.
- Social skills – sharing resources promotes social function. Talking about a themed lesson plan builds social skills. This can be a fun group self regulation activity for a small group in therapy sessions or in the classroom.
- Have students write on a slant board, lying prone on the floor with the page in front to build shoulder stability, or supine with the page taped under the table.
What are the benefits of learning to draw?
Drawing is an important skill. This does not mean everyone needs to become an artist, however drawing is a developmental milestone that can be addressed through creative activities like My Snow Globe.
- Building hand strength and dexterity – making lines and shapes builds hand muscles and develops muscle control
- Visual motor skills –Combining what is seen visually and what is written motorically. It takes coordination to be able to translate information from visual input to motor output. Coloring, drawing, counting, cutting, and tracing are some visual motor skills
- Visual Perception – Developing figure ground to see where one item starts and finishes, scanning to find the differences in each picture, and visual closure to understand that parts of shapes will create something whole are important to academic development
- Sequencing – will your learner do the drawings in order? Can they process information from left to right?
- Proprioception – pressure on paper, grip on pencil, feedback to muscles and joints
- Letter formation – letters are a series of sticks, arcs and circles. Learning to draw these shapes well, makes for an easier transition to letter formation
- Copying skills – learning to copy a drawing leads to copying words from a model, transferring the letters or objects from one place to another
- Bilateral coordination – remembering to use their “helper hand” to hold the paper while writing. Using one hand for a dominant hand instead of switching back and forth is encouraged once a child is in grade school or demonstrates a significant strength in one or the other
- Strength – core strength, shoulder and wrist stability, head control, balance, and hand strength are all needed for upright sitting posture and writing tasks
More skills addressed when completing tasks like My Snow Globe:
Many times, when presenting and documenting an activity, we focus on the motor skills like strength, coordination, precision, bilateral coordination, and motor planning. It is important to pay attention to the executive function and social skills learned:
- Attention
- Attention to detail
- Focus
- Sequencing
- planning
- Behavior, compliance
- Frustration and work tolerance
- Task initiation, avoidance, and completion
- Neatness
- Impulse control
- Self-regulation
- Organization
- Social function – problem solving, sharing materials, turn taking, waiting, and conversational skills
It is acceptable, and sometimes advised, to present a task while only measuring social skills, behavior, and executive function skills. Sometimes I present an activity, and manipulate the variables to monitor and address some of these skills.
Manipulate variables with this activity
What do I mean by manipulating the variables? You can manipulate variables, similarly to grading activities, but intentionally changing some of the variables to elicit a response. This can be as benign as having fewer items than your student needs so they must ask for something, or creating a frustrating element to practice tolerance. While this may seem unfair or intentionally creating stress, this is important to practice in a safe environment to build much needed skills.
- Provide few directions to address problem solving and frustration
- Add a timed element to work on planning, time management, and attention
- Create a rubric with several different elements students must complete to receive a grade
- Purposefully grade neatness, attention to detail, and task completion
- Add distraction to address self-regulation, attention, and focus
- Group students together who are not inherently cooperative. This tests tolerance, patience, sharing, problem solving, and social function
- Turn your task into a multi-layered one to practice organization, planning, sequencing, and memory
- Make the task extra challenging to encourage learners to work harder, deal with frustration, or ask for assistance
Free My Snow Globe Worksheet
It is certainly amazing how one worksheet can be broken down, modified, manipulated, and analyzed. There are even more things to consider when presenting an activity, like documentation, or building it into a lesson plan.
A great project would be to have students from all over the world do a joint project like My Snow Globe, and see how their visions of winter differ. My true vision of winter involves sitting on an island somewhere with my toes in the sand!
Get your copy by filling in the form below. This item is also found inside The OT Toolbox Membership!
Victoria Wood, OTR/L is a contributor to The OT Toolbox and has been providing Occupational Therapy treatment in pediatrics for more than 25 years. She has practiced in hospital settings (inpatient, outpatient, NICU, PICU), school systems, and outpatient clinics in several states. She has treated hundreds of children with various sensory processing dysfunction in the areas of behavior, gross/fine motor skills, social skills and self-care. Ms. Wood has also been a featured speaker at seminars, webinars, and school staff development training. She is the author of Seeing your Home and Community with Sensory Eyes.
What if you had themed, NO-PREP activities designed to collect data and can help kids build essential fine motor skills?
Take back your time and start the year off with a bang with these done-for-you fine motor plans to help kids form stronger hands with our Winter Fine Motor Kit. This print-and-go winter fine motor kit includes no-prep fine motor activities to help kids develop functional grasp, dexterity, strength, and endurance. Use fun, winter-themed, fine motor activities so you can help children develop strong fine motor skills in a digital world.
The Winter Fine Motor Kit includes reproducible activity pages include: pencil control strips, scissor skills strips, simple and complex cutting shapes, lacing cards, toothpick precision art, crumble hand strengthening crafts, memory cards, coloring activities, and so much more.
