Spatial awareness or concepts about space and shape, are pretty interesting to young children.  Snowflakes are one way to explore shape in an engaging and meaningful way, especially if you live in a part of the world that is filled with the cold, white stuff a good part of the year.  Also, as children begin working on their cutting-with-scissors skills, creating snowflakes is great way to practice.  Some kinds of paper are harder to cut than others but the easiest paper to cut is also the most likely to tear.  I like simple copy paper for snowflakes as it is sturdy enough to withstand some three-year old torture, but light enough to cut easily with children’s scissors.

Begin by folding the paper in half and then in half again.  The difficulty in cutting increases with the number of folds, so fold the paper to meet each child’s individual developmental needs.  One fold reveals the least interesting patterns and more folds reveals more complicated designs.  Ask the children about the shapes they have created.  Show them that they can fold the paper back up and continue cutting, if they so choose.  The snowflakes will just become more interesting.

If you want them to look more like snowflakes, and you think the children may enjoy it, you can begin with circular paper.  Again, fold at will, but the thicker the folded paper is, the more difficult it is to cut. 

If you are working with older children, snowflakes are also a great place to discuss symmetry.  They provide concrete examples of “mirror images” that are easily (maybe not easily) seen. Notice how unique and distinct each of the children’s snowflakes are. No two are alike and that is what makes them special.

Even the youngest children can make snowflakes out of white paper and a pair of scissors.  It is a great way for them to work on their fine motor skills and they can be fairly successful at making approximations of snowflakes.

Take thin white paper and fold it in half.  Fold it in half again.  Then let the children have at it.  You can show them how to make small cuts in the paper or larger cut-outs.  When the paper unfolds, the paper looks like a snowflake.

When the children unfold their snowflakes, you can help them identify the different shapes they have cut out.  You can also show them that there may be “symmetry” in their snowflakes.  Each side is a mirror image of the other.  This is a great “math” word that you can introduce when making your snowflakes.