20 Excellent Winter Books for Kids of All Ages

Winter is the perfect time for snuggling up with books – lots of them! Over the years, we’ve returned to certain books time after time during the winter. I thought I’d share our list of winter books for kids and give you an idea of some of the extension activities we’ve used to turn the books into fantastic lessons. We don’t always do extension lessons when reading, but the long days of winter often call for a little extra.

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Winter Books for Kids of All Ages

Excellent living books are a cornerstone of our homeschool. They offer many opportunities for understanding, and help my children to “experience” science, history, math, and more through the stories. Each of the books below are tried and true books that easily fit into the living book category. Enjoy!

Winter-Themed Picture Books

 

Snowflake Bentley is a great book that kicks off a study of snow. I’ve included more ideas than you can shake a stick at for snow study in NaturExplorer’s Snow and Ice.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening makes an excellent starter for a lesson on descriptive language in writing. The lesson could focus on settings, adjectives, or poetry. Here’s a nice lesson for older students using Robert Frost’s poetry.

 

The Mitten is such a sweet book! We like to use it to kick off lessons on volume. Here are tons of ideas for using this book across the curriculum and with various ages.

We use North Country Night to inspire lessons about animal tracks and signs, or how animals cope with the cold.

 

Charlie Needs a Cloak is a humorous story that teaches how to make cloth from wool. We use this book for lessons on sequencing and economics.

Who doesn’t love Owl Moon? Here’s a peek into a kindergarten lesson about owls we did using this book as our inspiration.

 

Warm as Wool is an excellent work of historical fiction that highlights the necessity of hard work and the trials of pioneer life. I love the ideas Delightful Learning offers to go along with this book.

Katy and the Big Snow has been read over and over and over again in my house. We love to play around with maps after reading the book, but I also found some fun ideas for playing with math afterward.

 

Every child’s wish is for lots and lots of snow, right? Snow inspires us to make paper snowflakes to put up all over the house.

Tracks in the Snow is another sweet book we use when learning about Animal Signs in the winter.

These easy-to-understand Winter Poems are great examples as we write our own winter poetry.

 

The Big Snow is one of our all-time favorites. It can kick off so many learning lessons. Homeschool Share has a terrific literature-based unit covering a range of subjects using this book.

The Keeping Quilt is historical fiction about immigration and family memories by Patricia Polacco, one of my very favorite authors of children’s literature. Carol Hurst offers several suggestions for follow-up activities.

 

The Log Cabin Quilt is another warm, quilt-themed book. An entire history/math/art unit could be done on the study of quilts alone. Again, Carol Hurst offers super suggestions for using this book and other quilting books.

Yet another quilt-themed book, A Patchwork Quilt, is a sweet story about memories and the relationship between a little girl and her grandmother. After reading this book, we gathered fabric with memories and pieced together our mini quilt squares.

 

Hanna’s Cold Winter is a heartwarming story of a boy who loved visiting the zoo with his family to see the hippos. One winter during WWII, the river froze, and everyone, including the famous hippos, went hungry. You’ll have to read it to see what happens. It’s a great book about ingenuity during a tough time. A rich discussion is a natural follow-up to this book.

Nessa’s Fish is a sweet story about bravery as a young girl protects her grandmother during a scary event out on the tundra. There are many classes in No Sweat Nature Study about the tundra and other winter topics that make a nice connection to this book.

 

The Snowy Day is a classic about a little boy named Peter and his simple enjoyment of a snowy day. It’s the perfect start to a wintery nature walk.

Winter-Themed Science Books for Kids

 

Ken Libbrecht’s Guide to Snowflakes is a beautiful book! It gives a lot of scientific information about snowflakes and how they are classified. It also helps you identify the various shapes and patterns. The photography is stunning. It’s a lesson in and of itself, but it pairs well with making paper snowflakes.

Snow and Ice is an easy-to-read book that is full of facts. Children will love the built-in activities.

Chapter Books for Winter

 

Mr. Popper’s Penguins is a great chapter book to read aloud to younger children. Penguins are a favorite topic of study during the winter, and this Pinterest board is full of fun penguin activities.

Jean Craighead George, author of Julie of the Wolves, is one of my favorite chapter book authors. The subject matter is advanced, so I wouldn’t read it with children younger than 5th grade. The setting is Alaska, making it a great winter choice. You can find many lesson ideas in this literature-focus unit study.

 

We all love Little House on the Prairie! The Long Winter is the perfect book of the series to read during the winter season. Homeschool Share offers a free book-themed lapbook that also covers pioneer history.

Stone Fox is a precious story about a little boy who enters a dog sled race to help save his grandfather’s potato farm. This free literature guide offers several learning ideas to stretch this book’s reach.

 

I have included The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a winter read because much of the story takes place during the winter, and, more importantly, because the cold symbolizes key themes. This Pinterest board has oodles of potential lesson ideas for you.

Tell me your favorite winter books for kids!

You can find all the Loving Living Literature posts here.

Winter Curriculum Your Children Will Love

   

 

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