I’ve done glyphs before, but I wanted to make this one more than just me reading a set of directions and the students following them. I also wanted to make it sort of a STEAM activity where students were creating and integrating different content areas. I found this Snowman Glyph from Andrea Mason on Teachers Pay Teachers. I like this one because it was simple enough for my students to do independently, but had an extension to the activity that required them to write about their glyphs. I did change the writing piece and made it more open ended. You can get it here (and a Spanish version here). Students then used Chatterpix and read their writing as a “script”. Finally, they smashed their Chatterpix by putting them into Seesaw to share with their classmates, families and me.

While not as STEAMy as I would have liked, this glyph activity was perfect for a Friday afternoon before a cold, snowy weekend. This fun and easy activity includes a little math (number sense to relate their age to the number of buttons), art (the creation itself), a tiny bit of science (temperature words hot and cold)–I know I”m stretching this!!!!–and of course the app smash is the technology piece. If I were to do it again in the future, I would include more math and science, requiring my 2nd grade students to use the skills that they are learning and practicing. For instance, they could make arms for their snowmen and make the length of each arm equal to how many people in their family, or estimate how many inches of snow we might get and reflect that estimate in the smile.