Martin Walker Elementary students wish for snowy winter

Special to Leader-Press

Some parts of Copperas Cove saw a sprinkling of snow during the holiday break, but it did not last long enough for children to play in, build snowmen or throw snowballs.

Sarah Schoonover’s class at Martin Walker Elementary decided to make some snowflakes of their own.

Students created as many words as possible using the letters s, n, o, w, f, l, a, k, e. The exercise met the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills 2.23B which requires students to spell words with common orthographic patterns and rules as well as TEKS 2.23D requiring students to spell base words with inflectional endings such as “-ing” and “-ed.” Students came up with words such as lawn, flow, and knows.

Students watched a video on how to cut out a snowflake from a piece of paper. They put this to practice by creating their own unique snowflakes. Although Schoonover was teaching the lessons as required by the state, the exercise also helped build students’ social skills.

The quote from Aesop, “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted,” paralells Schoonover’s philosophy.

“This is what I’m trying to teach my students. When I ask them what we should do in order to show kindness, they say we can donate money. I’m trying to teach them that kindness is shown in many ways; whether it is donating food or toys, donating money, or simply donating your time, energy, and creativity,” she said. “We decided to create snowflakes for a local nursing home while also making it educational. Not only is this teaching students how easy it is to be kind, but I was also able to meet TEKS with snowflake related activities.”

For Sarah Brown, 8, it was a joy to give rather than receive.

“I hope they feel joyful about the snowflakes because we made them for the nursing home residents to be happy,” she said.

Schoonover took the snowflake day lessons further requesting student write a “how to” paper on creating snowflakes. This met numerous TEKS such as 2.22B using capitalization, 2.22A writing legibly, 2.22C recognize and use punctuation marks, 2.21A understand and use parts of speech in writing, and lastly, 2.18A write brief stories that include a beginning middle and end.

Second grader Brandon Turner, 7, thought it was kind of cool making snowflakes and not knowing what the shape would be.

“You fold your paper, but leave a quarter of the paper. Then you cut that part off,” he said as he demonstrated with his hands. “Then, you fold it to make another triangle and then you start cutting random shapes. My coolest was my first snowflake because it had lots of rhombuses and a really big circle in the middle.”