Winter writing prompts are just what you need when the weather gets cold and the wintery snow starts to fall! Kids love these hands-on and YUMMY writing activities. Take a peek at how I get my first grade kids excited to write in our classroom.
Winter Writing Prompts – How To Make Hot Chocolate
What does every kid wish for on a cold winter day? A mug of hot chocolate! Take advantage of that with some how-to writing!
We begin this lesson with The Story Of Hot Chocolate by Rob McClurkan. This cute story tells about the origin of hot chocolate and it’s perfect to set the stage for your writing activity.
We also sing the song Hot Cup of Cocoa to get us in the mood for this tasty treat.
Making Hot Chocolate
Of course, reading this story makes the student's mouths water for some of this tasty treat. I gather everything we need to make the hot chocolate – a crock pot, chocolate milk, whipped cream, marshmallows and cups.
I like to make it easy on myself and just use chocolate milk. But, you can also buy the cocoa mix and white milk and make it that way, too. We simply pour the chocolate milk in the crock pot and heat it up. Then the kids can add marshmallows or whipped creme (or both!) before they drink it up!
Together, we make our hot chocolate in the crock pot, and then while it’s heating up, we work in shared writing to write the steps. The students help me think of the words and I write them on the anchor chart How To Make Hot Chocolate. As we’re working, I remind them that we use the words first, next then, and last in our how to writing.
Independent Writing
Next, it’s time for the students to write how to make hot chocolate themselves. We use this writing template and they have a word bank to help them with any tricky words. When they're finished they make a simple hot chocolate craft and we hang them on our bulletin board.
Winter Writing Prompts – How to Build A Snowman
Another one of our favorite winter writing prompts is How To Build A Snowman. If you live in the snowy north like me, we pick a day when we can actually go outside and build a snowman together. But, if you’re lucky enough to be the sunny warmth, I still have a trick to make this a fun hands-on activity.
Read Aloud
Begin this lesson with one of your favorite snowman books. A couple of my favorites are The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll and Snowman Magic by Katherine Tegen.
Building A Snowman
After we read our story, it’s time to actually build a snowman. We live in Ohio, where there is always plenty of snow, so we bundle up and head outside to build a snowman together. But if you aren’t able to do that, how about building a play dough snowman? Give each of your students a ball of white play dough or salt dough and let them make their own little miniature snowman. They can use toothpicks or small twigs for arms, beads for the eyes, and the tip of a toothpick (painted orange) for the carrot nose.
Writing About Our Snowmen
Finally, it’s time for the kids to show what they know by completing their own winter writing prompt. This is great practice for procedural writing and if we have time, they love making a snowman craft to accompany their writing.
Are you ready to get your kids excited about writing in those cold, winter months? Hop over here to grab your procedural writing prompts for winter!
Looking for more winter writing prompts? Take a look here:
