January + February Nature - animals Nature - plantsWinter weather Eco friendly actions. Recycle your Christmas tree. Recycle your Christmas cards. Food and farming

What is winter weather like? Lets look at snow and frost

What is snow? Clouds are made of tiny droplets of water. When these droplets freeze they change into ice crystals which move around inside the cloud, bumping into each other and sticking together. When they are large enough and heavy enough, they fall out of the cloud. If the temperature is below freezing, they fall as snowflakes. All images courtesy Professor K. Libbrecht -

More snowflakes All images courtesy Professor K. Libbrecht -

Types of snowflakes Stellar Sectored plates Stellar Dendrites Fernlike Dendrites Stellar snowflakes are thin crystals with six broad arms that form a star like shape. Sectored snowflakes are hexagonal crystals divided into six equal pieces. Dendritic means “tree like”. These types of snowflakes are fairly large 2-4 mm and an be seen with the naked eye. These are the largest crystals up to 5mm, with lots of side fern like side branches. All images courtesy Professor K. Libbrecht - Sectored snowflakes are hexagonal crystals divided into six equal pieces.

More about snowflakes “Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted that design was forever lost.” Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley The snowflake man. All images courtesy Professor K. Libbrecht -

A highly magnified image of a snowflakes Image courtesy Professor K. Libbrecht - You too can look at magnified snowflakes. Try catching falling snowflakes by placing a microscope slide outdoors when it is snowing. You will need to work quickly, place the slide under the microscope and study it. Try and work in a cold place.

What is frost? The night time temperature in winter often falls below freezing point. If the night air contains a lot of moisture, the droplets of water will freeze when they touch something very cold e.g. a leaf, blade of grass, window pane. White ice crystals form and this is called frost. Magnified frost images courtesy Professor K. Libbrecht -

Frost on plants

Create your own snowflake design. Create a digital snowflake design Create a paper snowflake design Create a snowflake design from plants and twigs

 Use a square of coloured or white paper.  Cut around a traced circle  Fold the circle in half.  Fold along the lines as shown in the diagram.  Use the scissors to cut patterns to make your snowflake design.  Open the out your snowflake design Create a paper snowflake design  Pull away the cut off paper.

Create a digital snowflake design using PowerPoint Add a hexagonal shape to the middle and decorative details to the side of each arm. Continue to add details - a white hexagon to the middle and diamonds around the centre. Draw six rectangles and arrange as below. Add a triangle or a diamond to the tip of each arm. Add further details – to achieve your final design.

Create a digital snowflake design To make a digital snowflake in PowerPoint you will need to use the following skills and tools. Use Basic Shapes : they are in the Drawing toolbar at the bottom of the page in AutoShapes. If this in not open – click on View in the top toolbar and click on Toolbars and then select Drawing.

Create a digital snowflake design To make a digital snowflake in PowerPoint you will need to use the following skills and tools. Use the Rotate tool: sometimes by just clicking on a shape the Rotate tool will there – look for the little green circle. You can also find Rotate in the Drawing toolbar at the bottom of the page in Draw.

Create a digital snowflake design To make a digital snowflake in PowerPoint you will need to use the following skills and tools. Use the Group tool : when you have created part of a snowflake design using a number of shapes, it will help you to : move the shapes around a page. if you want to make a shape larger or smaller. You will need to select all the shapes and then either: right click your mouse and Group tool will be shown or use the Draw toolbar at the bottom of the screen, Using the right hand side of a mouse to group. Finding Group tool in the Draw tool bar.

Create a digital snowflake design To make a digital snowflake in PowerPoint you will need to use the following skills and tools. Use the No Line tool : to make the shapes look like they have joined together - see diagrams opposite. group the shapes together and then select the No Line in the Line Colour toolbar. After removing the lines

Create a digital snowflake design To make a digital snowflake in PowerPoint you will need to use the following skills and tools. Use the Fill Colour tool : to add colour of your choice. There are many options you can choose from: Gradient Texture Pattern Picture Gradient Texture Pattern Picture

Click here to recap on how the star design was created.

Making snowflakes from what you can find in the garden or outdoors  Make a snowflake from twigs and string.  Add some evergreen plants and leaves.

ice KS 1 frost snowflake snow windy snowman freezing cold crisp slide ice white January words related to weather and nature ice KS 2 pattern shivering icicles footprints crystals symmetry bleak stark temperature scenes moisture

Make a winter scene

Winter Clipart - ‘grab and get’ Trees + Fence Snowman Plants + birds + tracks Snowflakes