Snowmen at Night: Coffee Filter Art

Coffee Filter Art

The colors in the book Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner are cool with blue moonlit snow and warm with glowing snowmen from the lights around the town. The pictures are very appealing and the story is a fun one to read. After your little learners enjoy story time with this popular winter tale, you can invite them to paint a nighttime sky and build a playful snowman of their own with this fun Snowmen At Night art activity.

Snowmen at Night Winter Art Activity Preschool

Snowmen At Night Art Activity

If you don’t have the book Snowmen at Night in your library yet, it’s a fun, imaginative tale for young children that explains why snowmen look different each morning. It must be because they play games, ice skate, and of course – have snowball fights while the rest of the world is sleeping.

So many stories happen during the day, it was a fun change for your kids to create a nighttime scene. You can talk about the different colors in the pictures and why the snowmen in the story are not completely white in the pictures.

Coffee Filter Winter Art Pre-K

Snowmen At Night Activity with Coffee Filters

Supplies

  • Coffee filters
  • Watercolor paint
  • Water for cleaning brushes
  • Paintbrush
  • White paper
  • Scissors
  • Glue
  • Pens

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Coffee Filter Art Directions

Start by inviting children to paint their coffee filters with watercolor paints.

When doing a book-related companion activity, your students my want to look at the pictures in the book to get ideas about how they want their artwork to look. Or they may prefer to use their own imagination and ideas to paint whatever they want – it’s their choice.

coffee filter art supplies

Coffee Filter Art Activity Tips

Since the coffee filter is absorbent, you may want to remind your kids to use lots of water with their watercolor paints to make the paint visible. After your children have painted their coffee filters with watercolors, set the filters aside to dry.

As coffee filters dry, invite children to draw circles on white paper for snowmen. Look at the book and note that the snowmen in the book are made with three circles. (Count the stack on a snowman. 1, 2, 3.) Children may want to make three circles, or more, or less for their snowmen.

If they choose, they could make several snowmen and depict them playing games just like in the book.

snowman glued onto colorful coffee filter

Making Coffee Filter Art

Help children cut out their white circles if they need help, and then glue the circles on top of the dried coffee filter. (Allow children to glue the circles as they choose, even if the end results do not look like snowmen.)

Offer colored markers for children to decorate their snowmen. To spark creativity, ask the children, “What would a snowman wear?”. Make sure to place something under the coffee filter so the markers don’t bleed through onto your table.

painted coffee filter with snowman on it

Once the snowman pictures are complete, hang them on a window to let the light behind the coffee filter make them “glow.” These would make a wonderful wall display in the classroom too!

BIO: Katie stays busy homeschooling her two kids and sharing their fun educational activities, cute crafts, and free printables at A Little Pinch of Perfect. One of her kids’ favorite shapes activities can be found here, Sorting Shapes Activity + Free Printable. Join her community of parents, caretakers, and educators who enjoy having fun and spending time with kids on Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram.

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