Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Snowmen at Night

The book I read is Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner and illustrated by Mark Buehner.  It is a picture book geared toward primary elementary grades and even preschool, probably ranging from pre-k-late 2nd grade.  I would give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars. 
This book is about what snowmen do when the sun goes down including sipping hot chocolate, racing, and playing snowman baseball.  These nightly activities are the cause for lopsided snowmen in the morning according to Buehner. 
Other books about winter could be used to tie this book into a unit.  One drawback to this book is that it can only be used in schools that have enough snow annually to build snowmen.  It would be much more applicable in a Chicago school as opposed to a Miami school.  If children have never experienced a snowman becoming lopsided in the morning, it is hard for them to relate to the story. 
Snowmen at Night could be used to discuss the melting process even at an early age in the classroom.  This book could also encourage the discussion about shapes and how one figure with a few shapes can change just by the shapes changing direction, like snowmen changing shape and height during the night even though it is the same snowman.  This book can especially be used when the winter begins or when the first snow falls in November.  This could also be incorporated into a unit about snow or snowmen.  After sharing this book with my students, I would hope that they would become more curious about everyday things like watching snowmen melt.  I would hope that my students would question anything they are not sure about after reading this book.  

1 comment:

  1. What a wonderful book to combine science (changing states) and math (shapes) with an imaginative story.

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