Free Winter Worksheets for Elementary Students 🥶

If you need free and editable worksheets for the winter season, then check out these winter worksheets for elementary students.  These worksheets are not only free; they are editable in Canva with a free Canva for Education account.  

These winter worksheets for elementary students are a great way to help your students improve their speech and language skills.  With a fun worksheet, you can work on all of your student’s goals: describing, reading comprehension, context clues, articulation, and more!

Winter Worksheets for Elementary Students

Here are some quick links to find exactly what you need in this post!  If you need more winter therapy ideas, make sure you head to the bottom of the post. 

• Winter Animals Smash Mat
• Winter Sentence Writing
• Wh- Questions for Winter
• Describe a Snowman Worksheet
• Winter vs. Summer Sorting Mat
• Freebie Resource Library for SLPs

Why Should You Sign Up for Canva for Education?

Use these Canva editable winter worksheets for elementary students in your therapy sessions for customized learning! It's a great blend of fun, education, and creativity for the holiday season. Here are some more reasons you should sign up for Canva today.

• Fully Editable and Accessible: Each of these free printable winter worksheets is ready to use but also fully editable in Canva.
• Low prep winter worksheets for elementary students!
• Adaptable: Adapt and modify the free printable winter activities for all of the students on your caseload!
• Enhances Literacy Skills: Use the worksheets to improve literacy skills.
• Seasonally Themed Learning: Using themed resources for the winter season helps to engage your students during this fun time of year. 
• Effortless Winter Lesson Planning: Winter lesson planning is now a breeze! Incorporate these helpful worksheets into your lesson plans.
• Diverse Formats: From interactive worksheets to printable activities, there's also a variety of formats to choose from.  Additionally, with Canva’s Magic Switch feature, you can easily change the format of your template into flashcards, presentations, graphic organizers, and more!

If you want to access these free winter worksheets, you’ll need to get a free Canva for Education account.  Just sign up using your school email address.  

Use these editable Canva worksheets in your therapy sessions to engage your students this holiday season!  If you want to download these today, then check out the links below to grab all the templates. 

Winter Worksheets for Preschool

This winter animal smash mat is a fun way to target vocabulary with your preschool and kindergarten students. The smash mat features 10 winter animals that your students will have to “smash” with play dough.

How to set up this winter animal smash mat: 

• Firstly, download the smash mat from a template link as a PDF file.

• Then, print out: 
  • 5-6 copies of the smash mats
  • 10 winter animals flashcards

• Laminate
  • If you want the smash mats to last a long time, laminate them for durability.

• You can also place the smash mats into plastic sleeves. 

Set up a sensory bin:

• Fill a large container with winter items (i.e., paper snowflakes, winter animals, etc.). 
• Place the flashcards inside the sensory bin. 
• If you don’t have a sensory bin, then you can use any fun winter-themed container. 

Playdough smash:

• Firstly, each student selects a flashcard and identifies the winter animal. 
• Then, they “smash” the animal's picture on the smash mat using playdough.
• Make this a fun game by having the students race each other to smash their mats.

If you want to know more about Canva, check out my Canva for Education blog post to find out more about how to use Canva for Education.

Vocabulary Words:

Use this smash mat to target nouns, adjectives, and verbs!  Here are some of the vocabulary words you can target with this fun activity:

• Nouns: (e.g., walrus, penguin, fox, polar bear, raccoon, squirrel, beaver, reindeer, porcupine, and otter.)

• Verbs: (e.g., jump, slide, freeze, snow, build, shovel, melt, hibernate, nap, waddle, defrost, plow, sled, migrate, smash, and thaw.) 

• Adjectives: (e.g., fluffy, frigid, icy, cold, chilly, frosty, brisk, wintry, white, frozen, barren, dreary, harsh, silent, bitter, blustery, cozy, and grey.)

Differentiation Strategies:

Here are some ways you can also differentiate this activity for older and younger students:

• For younger kids (e.g., preschool to first grade):
  • Work on receptive identification of the winter animals on their mat.
  • Give them a sentence prompt to repeat, for example,  “I see ______ in the winter.” (You can write it on a board, table, or paper.)
  • Add adjectives!  A simple one to use is colors.  For example:  “In the winter, I see a white polar bear.” 
  • Have your students act out the animal noises and actions.

• For second to fourth grade:
  • Create complex sentences with or without a sentence prompt. 
  • Have them tell a story about the animals and work on their narrative 
  • Ask them to draw a winter scene, and add the animals from the sensory bin. 
  • Increase the complexity of the sentences for each grade level. 
  • Use the EET to describe the category, function, location, color, etc.
  • Talk about the different animal habitats.

Goal Targeting 

Here are some goals you can target with this activity:

• Vocabulary:
  • Firstly, introduce new animal names, descriptive words, and actions.
  • Then, use the mat as a prompt for discussing animal habitats and behaviors.

• Describing
  • describe winter animals using 3/7 descriptive words (e.g., category, function, color, parts, location).
  • Compare and contrast two items (e.g., habitats, characteristics, location).

• Categorization for example,
  • Sort animals by characteristics or habitats.
  • Select animals whose names contain target speech sounds.
  • Practice words in isolation and then in short sentences.

• Following directions:
  • Follow simple commands: “Find the white seal.”
  • Follow 2-3 step directions: “First, smash the penguin, then find the bear.”

Winter Sentences Worksheet

The Winter Sentences Worksheet is a fun winter worksheet to improve sentence structure, vocabulary, and writing during the colder months.   Your students must create sentences for several winter-related words, which encourages creativity!

Activity walkthrough:

• Each worksheet features 5 winter themed words.  Your students will come up with sentences for each of the winter words. 

• This activity is also a fun and engaging way to learn about winter and winter words.

• The words that are targeted in this worksheet include:
  • Winter nouns: penguin, scarf, blanket, ice skates, mittens
  • Cold weather activities: sledding, ice skating, drinking hot chocolate, skiing, playing basketball
  • Icy adjectives: cold, icy, frozen, melted, windy.

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Differentiation Strategies:

• For younger kids:
  • Provide a sentence prompt, such as, “A winter word is a type of category that function.”
  • Punctuation and capitalization: Focus on specific skills (e.g., capitalize all proper nouns, put a period at the end of each sentence).
  • Provide the students with a jumbled winter sentence on the whiteboard and have them put the words in the correct order (for example, “them, We, gave, a, treat, winter, fun.”
  • Change the worksheet into different colors to keep kids engaged.

• For older kids:
  • Highlight grammar and correct use of tense, agreement, and punctuation.
  • Conjunctions: Introduce complex sentences with conjunctions, e.g., “It is cold outside, but the fireplace is warm.”
  • Sentence structure: Have students identify the subject, verb, and object.
  • Create jumbled sentences: Students create scrambled sentences for the other students to solve.
  • Punctuation: Focus on adding commas in the appropriate places.
  • Question formation: Have your students come up with questions where the answer is the winter word.  For example, if the word is “mitten”, then have them come up with the question: “What do we wear to keep our hands warm?”

Extension activities

• Assign these winter worksheets for elementary students to keep them learning during winter break or on a snow day.
• Students can also write a story about a winter adventure using the words in the worksheet.
• After your students have written sentences, play a winter-themed game.

Winter Activity Sheets for Kindergarten

The Winter Questions Worksheet can help your students understand and answer wh- questions related to winter. Here’s a detailed look at how this these winter worksheets for elementary students can be a great addition to your educational activities:

Activity explained:

• This winter worksheet features “What” questions related to winter themes.

• Students answer questions such as “What do you wear to keep your head warm in the winter?”.

• Then they have to find the corresponding picture from below and paste it into the correct box. 

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Specific goals:

• Focus on understanding and answering “What” questions.
• Target describing goals by asking the students to describe each item by function, appearance, or winter color.
• Improve categorizing skills by asking students what category each item belongs to (i.e., winter clothing, winter animal, etc.)

Differentiation Strategies:

• For younger students:
  • Make the words simpler (you can then use visual aids to help students understand and answer questions). 

• For older students:
  • Provide more complex questions that require deeper thinking and elaboration.
  • Have them make longer utterances by including the question in their responses (e.g., “A mitten is a type of clothing that keeps my head warm in the winter.”)
  • Remove the answer choices from the bottom of the worksheet and encourage more spontaneous answers. 
  • Work on writing skills to improve your students’ sentence structure and complex sentence formation of winter themes.

Extension activities

This is a great activity to go with some of my other wh- questions printable worksheets. These fun activities will help extend the learning because they have a fun winter theme.  Plus, they are free to edit in Canva!

Here are the links to some of those activities:

• Wh- questions poster.
• Flashcards for wh- questions.
• What questions worksheet
• Valentine's Day

Make sure you check out this worksheet and all the other “what” questions worksheets in Canva!

Describe the Snowman Winter Worksheet

The “Describe the Snowman” worksheet is a great resource that encourages students to work on descriptive language and parts of speech. Using this worksheet, you can target expressive language, vocabulary skills and even creative writing in a fun, winter-themed context. Here's a breakdown of this fun worksheet:

Worksheet Overview

• Firstly, there is an illustrated image of a snowman on the worksheet.

• Then, students have to describe the snowman using size, color, function, category, or location attributes. 

• After the students fill out the graphic organizer, they have to write a sentence to describe the winter picture. 

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Specific Phrases/Concepts:

• Students can describe the snowman using different attribute types, such as these descriptive vocabulary words: “fluffy,” “carrot nose,” “button eyes.”  

Differentiation Strategies:

• For younger students:
  • Use single words or simple sentences for descriptions, e.g., “The snowman is round.”
  • Then, provide your students with a word bank of possible words to describe the snowman. 
  • Review winter adjectives to describe a snowman prior to your session. 
  • Read books about snowmen (Students love “Sneezy the Snowman!”)
  • Make this worksheet part of your winter crafts.  Have students create a snowman out of construction paper and then decorate the snowman with buttons, pipe cleaners or glitter. 
  • You can even make this into a fun cut and paste snowman worksheet.
  • Target fine motor skills by having the students create their own snowmen with pom-poms, buttons, beads, and small rocks. 

• For older students:
  • Encourage detailed and creative descriptions.
  • Have your students use complex sentences or conjunctions to describe the snowman. 
  • Have students describe the snowman to their friend and describe a time when they built a snowman. They can then describe the steps they had to follow to build the snowman. 

Extension Activities:

Canva has so many activities you can check out to work on vocabulary related to building a snowman. Here are some other ideas to extend the lesson this winter!

Build-a-Snowman Sequencing:

• Use flashcards to show the steps of building a snowman. 
• Then, ask your students to sequence the steps correctly. 
• This can help with understanding order, following directions, and sequencing skills.
• I also have a build-a-snowman sequencing activity that goes well with this activity.

Snowman Storytelling

• Create a story about the snowman, incorporating the descriptive elements used.
• You can start the story and have each student add a sentence.
• This will encourage them to think creatively and also practice sentence structure and narrative skills.

Snowman Drawing Activity

• This is a fun activity I enjoy doing every year.  
• Firstly, the students must tell me the directions to draw a snowman picture on the board. 
• The directions have to be very specific (e.g., “Place a small circle above a medium sized circle”).
• When the directions aren’t specific enough (e.g., “Draw eyes on the snowman.”), make a silly snowman on the board by drawing the eyes wherever you want. 
• Your students will start giggling to see the funny ways you will draw your snowman.

Winter vs. Summer Sorting Worksheet

The Winter vs. Summer Sorting Worksheet is an interactive winter-themed worksheets set that engages students to talk about the differences between winter and summer.

Activity Details:

• Students cut and sort a variety of items and activities into either winter or summer categories.
• Encourages your students to recognize seasonal differences and the concept of categorization.

Differentiation Strategies:

For younger students:

• Focus on basic categorization, such as sorting clothing items or weather symbols.
• You can also target describing skills by asking the students to name attributes for each picture. 

For older students:

• Introduce reasoning and explaining choices, such as why certain activities are suited to specific seasons.

• Swap out the pictures for more complex vocabulary (such as, sweltering) and have the students sort the words. 

• Then, have the students talk about which season they enjoy more.  Then they must try to convince their peers to also like the season.

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Extension Activities

• Creating Collages
  • Students make collages representing each season. 
  • They can even use the word list from the worksheet or come up with a list of words that pertain to each season. 

• Seasonal Discussions
  • Share personal experiences related to each season, which will foster a deeper understanding of winter fun and summer activities with this winter-themed worksheet.

• Seasonal Sensory Bins: 
  • Set up sensory bins with materials representing winter and summer scenes. 
  • For example, for winter, include fake snow, miniature snowmen, and small winter-themed objects. 
  • For summer, use sand, seashells, beach toys, and miniature palm trees. 
  • Students can then sort the vocabulary words into the appropriate bin while engaging their senses and exploring seasonal concepts.

More Winter-Themed Activities

Check out these other seasonal worksheets to use during this cold season!

• Winter-themed Word Search
• Sentences for Winter Worksheet
• Clothing Adapted Book for Winter
• Winter Nouns
• I Spy in the Winter

So, when you’re planning your next session, remember to grab these free winter printables!

Make sure you check out all the freebies in my resource library for SLPs if you want more winter worksheets for elementary students!

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Terms of Use: Please note that these are all Canva templates that are available for free! They are for personal use only and should not be sold or distributed in any way.

Do you need more fun ideas for winter? Check out my other blog posts below to get more ideas!