Snowflakes are a lot of fun to create in elementary classes, but young students often struggle making snowflakes with a 100% success rate. However, when students follow along with an example, they can create some beautiful snowflakes.

The Snowstorm Collage download includes a lesson plan and two PowerPoint presentations. The lesson plan is a 2 page PDF, which describes the instructions and connects the activity to the National Core Arts Standards. There are two complete demonstrations included too. The “Paper Snowflakes Square Fold” is 67 slides long and includes details directions to demonstrate how to make paper snowflakes and use them for a collage. The “Paper Snowflakes Triangle Fold” PowerPoint includes 70 slides made of photographs and descriptive text to illustrate how to make snowflakes by folding paper into a triangle first.

The tutorials are over-the-top detailed, but they help all students achieve success because they can clearly see the demonstrations. This is far better than trying to have a class of students watch an in-person demonstration that is too small. The prepared PowerPoints also save a busy teacher precious planning time since everything is included.

Anchor Standard: 1. Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.

Lesson Objective: Students will be able to create negative space with cut paper.

Lesson Activity: Students will create a collage of paper snowflakes.

Materials: 3-4” squares of white paper, pencils, erasers, scissors, glue, and 9x12” colored construction paper

Time: 2 classes

This art project is great to do once winter begins because it helps students improve their fine motor skills by cutting and gluing. Making snowflakes in the winter time is a fun holiday alternative project because it doesn’t exclude students who don’t celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or Yule. Students also improve their abilities to plan ahead and think about what happens when they cut holes in paper.