How to use this Page

If you're a teacher, and you live somewhere in the general vicinity of the northeast United States, you may be reading this from underneath a giant pile of blankets, cocoa in hand, enjoying at least one unexpected day off from school.

And if you're reading this, then you may be browsing for what to do when school is back in session, because your kiddos' focus will most likely still be on the gigantic piles of snow outside, and not on whatever you originally had planned.

Second graders who are still marveling at the biggest snowstorm of their little lifetimes might have a good time writing about snow: Specifically, writing about how to build a snowman. So, here is a set of plans you might like to use, focusing on temporal words and how-to writing.


Some technical notes: 

• I wrote these plans based on Sailing Through First Grade's How to Build a Snowman: Instructional Writing Mini-Pack. Clicking on the link in the previous sentence will take you to the Teachers Pay Teachers store page, where you can download the packet for free!
• These plans use only pages 1-5 and 17-18 of the packet, but feel free to adjust and tweak as you like.
• The plans are aligned with Pennsylvania Common Core standards, but you can easily adapt to the standards in use in your state.
• The plans are for second grade. However, they can be easily adapted for first and third grade - just adjust your core standards and tweak the plans accordingly to fit.
• The plans use the book below as an anchor text. (But if you don't have it and are pressed for time, any book about snowmen, or ideally, building a snowman, should do):

• Title: Stranger in the Woods: A Photographic Fantasy (Nature)
  
  Author and photographer: Carl R. Sams II, Jean Stoick
  Pages: 48
  Reading Level: Ages 5 and up
  Publisher and Date: Carl R. Sams Photography, November 1999
  Edition: 1st 
  Language: English
  Published In: United States
  Price: $16.52
  ISBN-10: 0967174805
  ISBN-13: 978-0967174808

Thanks to David Lubar for the caption!

Thanks to Pamela Ross for letting me turning her caption into a comic.

Thanks to everyone who entered my Snowman Comic Caption Contest! So many great entries and quite a few of them would have fit perfectly. 

Congrats to David Lubar, whose caption I chose for the final comic. David wins a copy of either I'M BORED or NAKED! (his choice), signed by me, inscribed and mailed to anyone/anywhere he'd like, plus a Random hand-drawn/painted doodle by yours truly.

Runners-up, each of whom gets a Random hand-drawn/painted doodle:

"Darn screen is frozen." - Cindy Williams Schrauben 

"Frosty enjoyed nothing more than correcting people's grammar on the internet." - Ezra Denney

"I don't snow whether to use my pen name, Robert Frost, or my real name. I wonder if readers will carrot all." - Dee Leone

"Call me Icemael" - Kathy Holzapfel

"That's me as a snowball." - Pamela Ross

To David, Cindy, Ezra, Dee, Kathy & Pamela: please send me a FB message or Twitter DM with your contact info? Please start your msg with "COMIC PRIZE" to make sure I see it (I tend to get a lot of Kickstarter, auto-mailings & other requests).

You can read other caption suggestions on Twitter and Facebook. Here are just a few of my other favourites (apologies if I left out duplicate credits; there were a bunch of similar themes :-)):

"Oh, this is heating up! I'd better finish before I melt." - Sandra Gulland

"Google search: 'smart gloves'" - Lori Nichols

"It was a dark and snowy night..." - Jo Karaplis and Susan Pace-Koch

"Dear Bill Nye, what can I do to help stop global warming?" - Sue Jeffers

"Honey, I'll be done surfing the net soon, then you can have your head back." - Jim McMahon

"This ending will make their hearts melt!" - Kelly Bingham

"Throwback Thursday: Yes that was me once upon a time. I was just a flake." - Lindsay Brennan

"My writing today is abominable." - Henry Herz

"Missed Connections: Lost my old silk hat. Although life does surprisingly go on, you are missed. Thumpity thump thump just isn't the same without you." - Marcie Colleen

"Frosty's family was unable to cope with his winternet addiction." - Dan Hoffman

Any caption ideas for this comic? You can post your answer below, on Twitter (please tag with #inkycaption hashtag) or on FB.

There will be PRIZES.

Yep, I’m counting all three characters again. Don’t judge me.

Anyway, stop on over here for links to see what the rest of the HoHoDooDa doodlers are doing.

Oh, and if you are wondering what the heck HoHoDooDa is, check this out.

Here is a Winter Wonderland wine glass…..I plan on doing more like these to sell for the holidays...

“Snow Bank”

 I’m not at home tonight. So I doodled with an actual pencil instead of my Wacom stylus, took a photo of it with my iPhone and am now agonizingly posting with said iPhone using WordPress app.

Way cool or horribly obnoxious? You decide.

The story of the oldest known wild bird in the world. At 62+, she hatched a new chick in February, 2013. Read her remarkable story. A biography in text and art.

• Kindle
• Paperback
• Hardcover

Happy Holidays

Just got an e-newsletter from the North Pole and Santa passed along these writing tips from the Frosty the Snowman, posted for the young-at-heart who are writing novels this year.

Back by popular demand is my series on writing tips from popular Christmas figures. First published in 2007, they are updated here for your Christmas cheer.

Santa Claus’s Top 5 Writing Tips
12 Days of Christmas Writing Tips (live on 12/3)
The Gingerbread Man’s Top 5 Writing Tips (live on 12/4)
Frosty the Snowman’s Top 6 Writing Tips (live on 12/5)
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer’s Top 5 Writing Tips (live on 12/6)

Frosty The Snowman’s Top 5 Writing tips

These tips are based on the popular song, “Frosty the Snowman.” Read about the history of this song. Oh, what a great 3-D snowman cake pan!

Image by Daniel Novta

1. Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul,
   With a corncob pipe and a button nose
   And two eyes made out of coal.
   Frosty the snowman is a fairy tale, they say,
   He was made of snow
   
   Extended character descriptions. Don’t be afraid to take time to describe the main character. One the continuum of character descriptions, this one is longer than you’ll find in most children’s picturebooks. But it works because this is a character story.

2. but the children
   Know how he came to life one day.
   There must have been some magic in that
   Old silk hat they found.
   For when they placed it on his head
   He began to dance around.

Point of view. Notice the point of view here. The attention is squarely on Frosty, not on the children who found the old silk hat. When you write a story for kids, you don’t always have to put the child as the main character.

Language play. This section doesn’t add much to the plot, it’s just pure language play. But this is perfect for the younger audiences, who know that playing around with language is half the fun of reading a story or singing a song. Great onomatopoeia.

Conflict. Every good story needs conflict. And the character’s attitude in the face, well, in the face of certain death, is evident. It’s an attitude of taking joy where you find it and facing the future with courage.

Darcy’s Best Writing Advice: Fiction Notes Books

Development of the conflict. The traffic cop provides an extra bump of conflict that adds to the story’s development. For picturebooks, it doesn’t have to be much; in fact, it can’t be huge, or you’re writing a novel. This is perfect, just the introduction of an authority figure who yells, “Stop!” but can’t really do anything to stop the breakneck speed of Frosty’s life.

Hope. Children’s stories may end in tragedy, but the best offer a spot of hope. Notice also the nice repetition of the language play that sends the story off with a nice echo.

By Georgia Mierswa

Ah, the holidays. A time of leisure to eat, drink, be merry, and read up on the meaning of mistletoe in Scandinavian mythology…

Taken from the Oxford Index’s quick reference overview pages, the descriptions of the wintry-themed words above are not nearly as simplistic as you might think — and even more intriguing are the related subjects you stumble upon through the Index’s recommended links. I’ll never look at a Christmas tree the same way again.

ICE-SKATING
In its simplest form dates back many centuries, [done] with skates made out of animal bones….

→ Sonja Henie (1912 – 1969)
Norwegian figure skater. In 1923 she was Norwegian champion, between 1927 and 1936 she held ten consecutive world champion titles, and between 1928 and 1936 she won three consecutive Olympic gold medals. In 1938 she began to work in Hollywood, in, among others, the film Sun Valley Serenade (1941)…

→ Sun Valley Serenade
… Such was the popularity of the Glenn Miller Band by 1941 that it just had to appear in a film, even if the story was as light as a feather…

YULE
…The name comes from Old English gēol(a) ‘Christmas Day’; compare with Old Norse jól, originally applied to a heathen festival lasting twelve days, later to Christmas…

→ Snorri Sturluson (1178 – 1241)
Icelandic historian and poet. A leading figure of medieval Icelandic literature, he wrote the Younger Edda or Prose Edda and the Heimskringla, a history of the kings of Norway from mythical times to the year 1177…

CHRISTMAS TREE
It is generally assumed that this indisputably German custom was introduced to Britain by Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, but this is only partly true. The British royal family had had regular Christmas trees since the days of Princess Charlotte of Mecklenberg Strelitz…But it was certainly due to active promotion by Victoria and Albert that the fashion for trees spread so remarkably fast, at least among the better-off…

FATHER CHRISTMAS
– …Gives news of Christ’s birth, and urges his hearers to drink: ‘Buvez bien par toute la compagnie, Make good cheer and be right merry.’
– There were Yule Ridings in York (banned in 1572 for unruliness), where a man impersonating Yule carried cakes and meat through the street.

→ Clement C. Moore (1779 – 1863)
…Professor of Biblical learning and author of the poem popularly known as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” published anonymously in the Troy Sentinel (Dec. 23, 1823), widely copied, and reprinted in the author’s Poems (1844). The poem’s proper title is “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”

WASSAIL
– A festive occasion that involves drinking.
– It derives from the Old Norse greeting ves heill, ‘be in good health’.

→ Christmas
… The date was probably chosen to oppose the pagan feast of the Natalis Solis Invicti by a celebration of the birth of the ‘Sun of Righteousness’…

SNOWMAN
(1978) Raymond Briggs’s wordless picturebook uses comic‐strip techniques to depict the relationship between a boy and a snowman who comes alive in the night but melts the next day….

→ Abominable Snowman
A popular name for the yeti, recorded from the early 1920s.

→ Yeti
A large hairy creature resembling a human or bear, said to live in the highest part of the Himalayas…
…comes from Tibetan yeh-teh ‘little manlike animal’.

MISTLETOE
– Traditionally used in England to decorate houses at Christmas, when it is associated with the custom of kissing under the mistletoe.
– In Scandinavian mythology, the shaft which Loki caused the blind Hod to throw at Balder, killing him, was tipped with mistletoe, which was the only plant that could harm him.
– ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ a ballad by Thomas Bayly (1839), which recounts the story of a young bride who during a game hides herself in a chest with a spring-lock and is then trapped there; many years later her skeleton is discovered.

→ Evergreens
A high proportion of the plants important in folk customs are evergreen — a fact which can be seen either in practical or symbolic terms. Folklorists have usually highlighted the latter, suggesting that at winter festivals they represented the unconquered life-force, and at funerals immortality.

GINGERBREAD
Cake or biscuits flavoured with ginger and treacle, often baked in the shape of an animal or person, and glazed.

→ Gingerbread
The gilded scroll work and carving with which the hulls of large ships, particularly men-of-war and East Indiamen of the 15th to 18th centuries, were decorated. ‘To take some of the gilt off the gingerbread’, an act which diminishes the full enjoyment of the whole.

GIFT
– …gifts have importance for tax purposes; if they are sufficiently large they may give rise to charges under inheritance tax if given within seven years prior to death (see potentially exempt transfer).
– A gift is also a disposal for capital gains tax purposes and tax is potentially payable.

SNOWFLAKE
The result of the growth of ice crystals in a varied array of shapes. Very low temperatures usually result in small flakes; formation at temperatures near freezing point produces numerous crystals in large flakes.

→ Ice crystal
Frozen water composed of crystalline structures, e.g. needles, dendrites, hexagonal columns, and platelets.

→ Diamond dust
Minute ice crystals that form in extremely cold air. They are so small as to be barely visible and seem to hang suspended, twinkling as they reflect sunlight.

Georgia Mierswa is a marketing assistant at Oxford University Press and reports to the Global Marketing Director for online products. She began working at OUP in September 2011.

The Oxford Index is a free search and discovery tool from Oxford University Press. It is designed to help you begin your research journey by providing a single, convenient search portal for trusted scholarship from Oxford and our partners, and then point you to the most relevant related materials — from journal articles to scholarly monographs. One search brings together top quality content and unlocks connections in a way not previously possible. Take a virtual tour of the Index to learn more.

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The post A holiday maze appeared first on OUPblog.

Q: What is a snowman’s favorite breakfast cereal?

A: Snow Flakes.

Shimmy on over here to check out my fellow HoHoDooDa enthusiast’s doodles!