A free winter math activity for grades 1 to 3. Each child answers six questions about themselves, and every answer decides a part of their snowman: the hat, the scarf, the buttons, the arms, the nose and the mouth. Then the class reads each other's snowmen, tallies the answers and makes a bar graph.
Print the legend, the parts and the snowman body for each child. Read each question on the legend together. The child finds the part that matches their answer, colors it, cuts it out and glues it on the snowman. Buttons, eyes, the mouth and a round nose are drawn straight on. When every snowman is done, hang them up and read them: a snowman in earmuffs walks to school, a striped scarf means a brother or sister, and the buttons count the people at home.
Then use the class tally sheet to count the answers and graph how everyone gets to school. It is a data lesson that feels like a craft: children collect the data from themselves, show it in a picture, and read it back. For more graphing practice, see the graphing worksheets, or try the probability experiments with older children.
Printing tip: print at 100 percent (actual size) on US Letter paper. The parts are sized to fit the snowman body.
A glyph is a picture that shows information. Each part of the picture stands for an answer to a question, the way a symbol on a graph stands for a number. Here every child builds a snowman from their own answers, so the finished snowmen can be read, sorted, tallied and graphed.
Grades 1 to 3. First graders can do it with an adult reading the questions aloud. Second and third graders can read the legend themselves and do the tally and graph on their own.
No. Every answer shows in the shape of a part (which hat, a striped or plain scarf, how many buttons), not its color, so the glyphs can be read when printed in black and white. Children color their snowman any way they like.
Yes. The Read the Glyphs sheet has three finished snowmen to read with the legend, so a single child can practise reading glyphs without a class. The class tally works with a family, too.
About 30 to 45 minutes for the snowman, and 15 to 20 minutes for the tally and graph. Many classes make the snowmen one day and graph them the next.
Printable Scholar
