As a fun winter activity, I sometimes have the students make a snow person glyph. It’s a good way to share information about themselves by answering questions and drawing features according to their responses. Plus, this is about as close to snow as we get in Texas!

In the past, I’ve provided a template to use in Microsoft Paint but this year I had another motive. I wanted to get iPads in the students’ hands and I wanted the teachers to see how the students would respond to them.

The assignment was:

• Choose a drawing app to make a snow person. (Drawing Box, Art Set, Doodle Buddy, or Color Box HD)
• Decorate the snow person according to answers to questions on the glyph.
• Email the drawing to me.

Since we had different drawing apps I didn’t spend time explaining each one. I thought the best way was to let students explore. And it didn’t take them long to learn!

The hardest part was determining the best way to email the drawing. Each app was different enough to be just a bit confusing. Some allowed emailing from within the app; others required saving the image to the photo roll and emailing from there. The best part was that once a child learned how to do that, the knowledge was eagerly shared with others.

As much as I enjoy working with students, I have to say that the very best part of this activity was watching the teachers! A couple of them really got into this. The students LOVED watching their teachers exploring and learning alongside them! They especially enjoyed it when they were asked how to do something or how a tool worked. And it was fun watching the eagerness to come to their teacher’s rescue when they heard, “Oh, no!” or “Oops!” or “What just happened?”

When one of the teachers raised her hand because she couldn’t figure out how to email to the picture to me, several students immediately appeared at her side to guide her through the process.

It was amazing to watch the interaction between the teachers and students. The children were absolutely thrilled to see their teacher being a learner!

Was there a lot of higher-level learning going on with this particular activity? Not so much. But the valuable aspect was that the students were exploring, problem-solving, and teaching.

Enjoy the animoto video of the Snow Person Glyph!