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Winter keeps us inside more, which means we spend a lot of time reading books and engaging in fun hands-on activities for building those motor and early literacy skills.
My three year old daughter recently started showing an interest in letters. Naturally, the reading teacher in me jumped at the chance to start engaging in letter recognition, tracing and early literacy activities with her.
We keep a basket of seasonal/holiday books in the living room. These books get rotated as the seasons/holidays change. Right now, we’ve been reading our favorite winter books. Reading seasonal books is a great way to build my daughter’s vocabulary, nurture her ongoing curiosity & love of asking questions, and engage in meaningful conversation with her. Bonus that her little brother loves turning the pages and interacting with the books too!
In this post, I am going to share with you 12 of our favorite winter books, as well as simple, hands-on extension activities you can do with your child. These fiction and non-fiction books are engaging, high-interest and durable. The perfect addition to any home library, especially if you are homeschooling and looking to build a winter-themed unit for your child.
Secrets of Winter Shine A Light
This informational winter book is fun to read because your child uses a flashlight to reveal a hidden habitat on each page. This engaging non-fiction book explores those animals that are active in the winter. It is filled with beautifully detailed illustrations and paints a picture for your child of what happens outside in the winter.
Animals in Winter Sensory Bin Toddler Activity
Putting together an “Animals in Winter” Sensory Bin is an interesting after reading activity for this book. Simply fill a large bowl, plastic container or dishpan with blue crinkled paper (the kind you put in gift bags or baskets) or cotton balls (this resembles snow). Then “hide” animal figurines or picture cards of animals who live in the snow. Open the activity to exploration and have your child search for each animal. Use the picture cards or animal figurines to talk about the characteristics and behavior of each animal.
Winter Wonderland Sound Book
Any book with sounds and buttons to push is a hit with both my children, especially my one year old son. The bright and colorful illustrations grab his attention and the real sounds bring the pages to life and take my children into a world filled with winter magic. We brought this book out during the Christmas season and I chose to keep it out well into January because my children enjoyed reading it so much. They spent time reading it together, too, which was sweet to watch. The die-cut elements on each page provide a tactile part to the reading experience. There are holes to peek through and finger trails for their little hands to explore.
We love to play “I Spy” or explore our “Look and Find” books in our house. The detailed illustrations in this book work well for a game of “I Spy”. Think of an animal, activity, or detail from the winter scenes. For example, “I spy two animals building a snowman.” Have your child page through the text and find this. This activity can be done after reading each page or after reading the whole book. Or simply, after reading each page say, “How many animals do you see in the picture?” Connect literacy and math by having your child count different elements of each picture (animals, trees, snowflakes, hats, houses, etc.).
What is Snow?
This informational lift-the-flap question and answer book is perfect for early readers. The facts and information are presented in bite-sized chunks. The text is highly supported by pictures making it perfect for our littlest readers. I even learn something new when I read these first question and answer books!
This winter book talks about all the things you can do with snow.
- Throw soft snowballs inside.
- Build a snowman out of cardboard boxes.
- Build an igloo with Duplo blocks, Legos or Play Doh.
- Draw an igloo on a sheet of blue construction paper, making the bricks. Grab a bag of mini marshmallows and guide your child as he/she glues one marshmallow onto each brick. This activity reinforces the concept of one to one correspondence, a foundational counting skill. Plus, it is fun to play with your food! We enjoyed eating a marshmallow or two after we finished our igloo.
- Coffee filter snowflakes are fun to make with your toddler. Using blue washable markers, let your child scribble all over white coffee filters. Then, using a dropper or plastic spray bottle, wet the coffee filter and watch the color magically spread across the material. It gives the coffee filters a watercolor look. Let dry, fold and cut out a snowflake design on the folds. I cut squares and triangles on the folds. Open to reveal your beautiful masterpiece!
- Engage your child in some indoor winter sensory play by making your own snow using two ingredients: baking soda and shaving cream. Grab some measuring cups or plastic bowls from the kitchen, some toys from the playroom (cars, trucks, animals, Little People) and watch your child explore the fake snow.
Crow in the Snow
This phonics story is a cute and fun one to read with your children. The rhyming text and sweet story is engaging for young ones, helping to develop those necessary language and early reading skills. Rhyming winter books are fun to read, too! This story is perfect for those children who are starting to read by themselves.
In this story, a crow is walking through the snow and spots some footprints. He decides to follow them, finding all of these winter things that lead him to a frozen lake where some animals are ice skating. Suddenly the ice starts to crack and one of the animals (a mole) falls into the freezing cold water. The crow, along with the other animals, work together to save Mole.
Talk to your child about the crow and how he helped his friends. His friends called him a hero. Talk about what it means to be a hero.
Lizard in A Blizzard
This text is another cute and fun phonics story to read with your children. Some phonics books tend to be quite boring, but this winter one is anything but boring! While there is rhyming text to help your child develop phonemic awareness, they are enjoying a naturally flowing and FUN story about the featured character. In this case, it is a lizard.
As you know, lizards are most active on warm, summer days. In this story, the lizard decides he wants to see snow. The iguanas and geckos in the story tell lizard how the snow will effect them, cold-blooded animals. So, this story does a nice job of being educational and fun at the same time. You can engage in a conversation with your child about the difference between cold-blooded and warm-blooded animals. Talk about why iguanas, geckos and lizards really move slower in the cold. You’ll also find in this book, the author uses fancier words to help build your child’s vocabulary (clever, odd, invention, attention, mends, etc.).
The lizard builds a snow machine and creates a blizzard. But, he fixes his snow machine and it makes ice cream instead. In the end of the story, his friends give him a little snow globe so he can enjoy the snow. What a thoughtful gift!
Lift-the-Flap Seasons and Weather
With 80 flaps for little hands to lift and explore, this engaging non-fiction winter book is a fun and interactive one for teaching about the seasons and weather. The bright and colorful pictures peak your child’s interest, providing a lot of detail to spark conversation about the current season. Plus, there is a fun search & find activity on each page. My three year old daughter LOVES “look and find” as she calls it. This activity is so powerful for building your child’s listening, memory and vocabulary skills. It’s a great way to engage your child in the reading of this book!
Winter Wonderland Sticker Book
My daughter LOVES her sticker books and just playing with stickers so this winter book is right up her alley. Sticker books are a wonderful way to improve your child’s hand-eye coordination. Not only is she strengthening her fine motor skills by peeling and placing stickers, she is in control of the book! She gets to bring each magical winter scene to life with the provided stickers, stimulating her imagination & creativity in the process. There are over 200 stickers! This book will grab your child’s attention and keep them focused for a significant amount of time, especially in December around Christmas. How fun is that?!
That’s Not My Snowman
This touchy-feely board book is one of our absolute favorite winter books! At first glance, you may think it’s a book for babies, but the simple repetitive text is great for toddlers and preschoolers. We’ve read this book (and many others in the series) so many times that my daughter now “reads” it to her little brother. She is so proud of herself and loves showing him what to touch on each page. I love this because it is building her confidence as a reader and creating a positive reading experience for her. There’s a little white mouse on each page that we look for every time we read the That’s Not My books. And I have to point out the metallic page edges and elements on each page. They make this book so eye-catching!
Do you want to build a snowman?
A construction paper snowman, that is! As an extension to this book, engage your toddler in building a snowman out of construction paper and cotton balls. Let your child choose the color of the snowman’s hat, scarf and mittens.
Another fun craft activity for babies, toddlers and preschoolers is making footprint snowmen. My son and daughter LOVE having their feet painted. I get little ticklish giggles out of them. Not only is it an art activity, it is a sensory experience for them.
That’s Not My Penguin
Another touchy-feely winter book that engages babies, toddlers and preschoolers alike. From looking for the little mouse on each page to learning descriptive vocabulary, this sweet board book is the perfect addition to your home library. The thick board pages withstand lots of sessions reading this book. We love the brightly colored pages and cute penguins on each page!
My daughter recently made a handprint snowman in her preschool class and I thought it is the cutest activity to go along with That’s Not My Penguin!
You can also incorporate some gross motor practice by waddling around the living room like a penguin.
Penguins
This winter book is part of a 10 book collection called Beginner Animals. It’s filled with interesting facts and real photos of penguins. What is great about this and the other non-fiction books I’ve described in this post, is that your child can pick one up and turn to any page. These books do not have to be read from the first page to the last page. They do not need to be read in one sitting. You can choose a page that looks interesting to your child, read the text, talk about the photos, and engage in a conversation about what was read. This is perfect for toddlers and preschoolers because of their limited attention span.
The Chilly Little Penguin
In this cute winter book, Perry the Penguin lives with his family and loves doing activities outside. In the story, he is looking for a way to keep warm. This title is part of a leveled reading series. This book is designed with new readers in mind, making it perfect for toddlers and preschoolers. There is simple text and punctuation on each page. The colorful and detailed pictures will keep your children engaged throughout this cute story. Many of the activities Perry the Penguin does in the story are ones your children would do in the winter. This makes it easy for your child to connect to the character and what is happening in the story! Also, there are little puzzles to do at the end of the book. These puzzles are about the story and are a quick way to test your child’s comprehension and reinforce specific vocabulary!
How Big is a Million?
Pipkin the Penguin is the main character in this padded hardcover winter picture book. He is always asking big questions and in this text, he wants to know how big a million is. He sets out to find the answer to his question. Along his journey, Pipkin finds ten fish, one hundred penguins, one thousand snowflakes and makes a new friend. The illustrations are true to the text. So on the page where he finds one hundred penguins, there are actually one hundred penguins. He goes home to tell his mother about his journey to find a million. At the end of the book, there is a large envelope and the answer to Pipkin’s question, “How big is a million?” is inside. When your child opens the envelope, there is a giant poster that unfolds and shows Pipkin what one million really is.
Looking for more winter-themed literacy fun?! Check out this 16-page Winter ABC Pack filled with winter-themed practice opportunities for tracing, writing and identifying uppercase letters W, S, I and P. There is a fun coloring sheet for each letter, too.
Each coloring sheet features a supporting sentence to build your child’s winter vocabulary and offer an additional opportunity to practice identifying each focus letter.
Keep track of all the books you read with your child this winter using the snowflake tracking sheet at the end of the booklet.
Once downloaded, simply print each page and you are ready to get started on a literacy adventure with your child! I would suggest printing each page on cardstock and putting inside a sheet protector. Keep all of the pages inside a binder or folder of your choice. Have your child use a dry erase marker to trace and write each letter. The sheet protectors allow you to reuse each activity sheet multiple times.
You can also use manipulatives such as mini marshmallows, white PomPoms or cotton balls to make each letter. This transforms the activity into one that strengthens fine motor skills. You can even provide your child with a pair of tongs to pick up the small manipulatives!
Use Wikki Stix, Play Doh or mini snowflake stickers to make the shape of each letter. There are so many possibilities of how to use the letter sheets and make it a true hands-on experience!
Engage in conversation about each coloring sheet. Read the sentence to your child, pointing to each word as you say it. Have your child help you identify the focus letter in the words. Talk about the details of the picture. What is happening? What do you see? Then engage in some good old relaxing coloring fun.
There you have it!! Our 12 favorite winter books to read and engaging extension activities to go with them. Which one are you most excited to read with your child?!
There are so many great activities included with this book list. Love them all. Might pull out some cotton balls or try a hand print penguin.
Thank you Jenn!! I hope you and your kiddos have fun making a hand print penguin. I thought it was super cute!