My daughter is constantly asking me when it’s going to snow.  She is dreaming of a white Christmas in the worst possible way.  Sadly, it was 68 degrees here yesterday.  I’m guessing that a white Christmas is out of the question.  However, to keep her christmas excitement going we decided to make our own snowflakes.  You don’t even need to ask me how to do it, this is something practically everyone has made when they were kids.  The only thing we did out of the ordinary was use coffee filters instead of regular paper.

This is a great craft to do with your preschool aged kids.  First it helps them practice their scissor skills.  They get a little math exposure learning about folding the papers.  (Yay fractions!) Not to mention the geometry they get to ponder while making shapes in their cuts.  Add all that to the outright excitement as they unwrap their snowflakes and see the beautiful patterns that they created.  Being a nerdy mom, I was quick to point out that every single snowflake is unique.

My daughter (5) had a great time trying to copy my cuts to make a snowflake identical to mine.  It was great for her to learn that the smallest variation on her cuts ended in huge changes on the unfolded snowflake.  Furthering the point that all snowflakes are unique, no matter what.  For added fun, once we finished we taped up all our snowflakes (a whole coffee filter package worth!) on all of our windows.  Our snowflakes may be unrealistically huge compared to the real deal, but our windows are festive and wintery.   Giving us the illusion of that white Christmas that my daughter was so hoping for, without the cold.

-Stephanie Wright