Over and Under the Snow ~ PPBF

I have, what I think, is an absolutely fabulous book for Perfect Picture Book Fridays with Susanna Hill. We're learning about the ways in which animals adapt to the weather and seasons, and this book fits the bill!

Title:  Over and Under the Snow

Author: Kate Messner

Illustrator: Christopher Silas Neal

Publisher: Chronicle Books, 2011

Theme: Winter, Animals, Snow

Intended Audience: Ages 4 to 9

Summary (from Amazon): "Over the snow, the world is hushed and white. But under the snow exists a secret kingdom of squirrels and snow hares, bears and bullfrogs, and many other animals that live through the winter safe and warm, awake and busy, under the snow. Discover the wonder and activity that lies beneath winter's snowy landscape in this magical book."

Opening Lines:  Over the snow I glide. Into woods, frosted fresh and white.

Why I Love This Book:  One of the reasons is that it fits in perfectly with what I'm teaching. But it's more than that. I just love the illustrations. I'm not sure how it was done. The inside cover just says "mixed media". But they're simple, beautiful, peaceful and enchanting. And the text follows suit.

Resources:

1. Forest Creatures in the Winter POSTERS: We're working on these right now. It's nothing too elaborate. My kids are working in pairs to show how a forest animal prepares for winter and how they spend the winter. I love how much chatting about the animals goes on while they're working on these.

2. Pop-Up Book: It would be easy to make a little book with the front sponge-painted white, for snow. When you lift the cover, you could have an animal of your choice pop up. The background would be the animals winter habitat.

3. Winter Tree Art:

I put painters tape on construction paper. Then the kids painted the paper with white acrylic (I couldn't find tempera).  Then I peeled off the tape (you need to do this before the paint dries ~ it's easier to get off that way). Once the paint was dry the kids used black crayon to trace the trees, add bark, and some of them chose to draw little animals under the snow.  Diana, my colleague, did this with her Kindergarten kids. She had them outline their trees with charcoal. The charcoal is darker and makes a thicker line, so hers stand out quite a bit more than mine do. But I wasn't up for the smudgy mess:)

 Thanks for the great idea, Diana!!

4. Under the Snow is very similar. I  wrote about this book last year for PPBF. If you click on the image it will take you that post where I have a lot more resources.

Happy Reading!