13th February Winter Olympics

It is Summer in Australia and it has been extremely hot and humid at times, so the students at school are not giving a lot of thought to winter sports although many of them do ski.  Australia has not yet won a medal at the games and many of the sports being contested, the students have never heard of. Nevertheless, yesterday my friend who was helping in the library thought to do a small display of books about winter sports. We had four nonfiction titles about skiing, snowboarding and iceskating...not much. That got me thinking there must be more.

Well there is so I can now expand the display to include some picture book fiction.

Skiing:

Iceskating:

And some chapter books:

15th January World Snow Day

Wow, how can it be 'World" Snow Day when half the world are experiencing summer? Who decided this?

There is no snow in Australia at the moment, but there will be students that I teach experiencing snowy holidays in the Northern hemisphere because their families are skiers or snowboarders.

The International Ski Federation (also known as FIS—from their official French title, Fédération internationale de ski et de snowboard) is the organisation that founded World Snow Day. It is celebrated on the third Sunday in January each year; the inaugural celebration started in 2012. World Snow Day, however, was the second phase of the FIS campaign to get more kids involved with snow sports. The first phase, which was called ‘Bring Children to the Snow’, began five years earlier.

If it was snowing here it would be fun to join in. There are so many fun books about the snow. See my Pinterest page.

Start with these:

• Snow  by Sam Usher

• Lost  by Sam Usher

• Snow  by Cynthia Rylant and Lauren Stringer

• Snow  by Walter de la Mare and Carolina Rabei

• Snow  by Roy McKie and P.D.Eastman

• A Perfect Day  by Carin Berger

• Bunny Slopes by Claudia Rueda

• The Story of Snow  by Mark Cassino and Jon Nelson

• The Snowflake by Neil Waldman

• Red Sled by Lita Judge

•The Snowy Day  by Anna Milbourne and Elena Temporin

• Making a Friend by Alison McGhee and Marc Rosenthal

• The Big Snow Adventure  by Alison Reynolds and Mikki Butterley

• Walking in a Winter Wonderland  by Tim Hopgood

And here's some short chapter books from series where there's fun in the snow

• Pug's Snow Day by Kyla May

• Charlie and the Big Snow by Hilary McKay

• Hot Dog! Snow Time! by Ahn Do

• Boyz Rule Freaky Snow Dude by Felice Arena

• Goblin in the Snow by Victor Kelleher

• Magic Bone Nice Snowing You! by Nancy Krulik

• Freddie Ramos Stomps the Snow by Jacqueline Jules

• Rabbit's Bad Habits by Julian Gough

• Girlz Rock! Snowball Attack by Jacqueline Arena

• Claude on the Slopes  by Alex T. Smith

• Mouse and Mole, A Winter Wonderland by Wong Herbert Yee

• Have Fun Anna Hibiscus! by Atinuke

• Arthur and the Ice Rink by Johanne Mercier

• Pugly on Ice by Pamela Butchart

And if you're living in the Southern hemisphere you'll have to make do with tobogganing down some sandhills!