The changing seasons provide an ideal opportunity to help children create art projects related to a particular season. In particular, the snow and ice that come with winter provide teachers with opportunities to have the children create art with the natural elements of the season. Art teachers can also incorporate holiday art projects that coincide with the winter season.

Snow Art
Snow provides an opportunity to teach the children about colors in a creative way. One activity that you can show the kids is coloring snow. For this project, fill up squirt bottles with warm water and add one or two drops of food coloring to each bottle. Outside in the snow, the kids can find their own space and spray the snow with the squirt bottles. Encourage them to trade colors with other children to make colorful works of art. Since snow won't last, take a picture of each child's snow art and paste it on the class bulletin board. Consider having the children work together to create a snowman and spray the snowman different colors for each section, or create snow angels and fill in the outline with the food coloring sprays.

Ice Art
Combine art with science. Bring in several large blocks of ice. Show the kids how salt can melt ice by sprinkling some on a particular spot on the ice, then drip food coloring over the spot. The colors will drip into the ice block, creating intricate art designs. Group the kids to work on ice blocks.

Have the kids gather nature items such as branches, twigs and seeds. Each child then gets an aluminum pie pan filled with water. The children arrange their nature items in the water however they wish, then place a cotton string halfway into the water and halfway out. Set the pans outside to freeze; the next day, remove the pans from the ice and you have ice ornaments, which can be hung from a tree in the schoolyard.

Christmas Art
The Christmas holiday provides many opportunities to teach through art projects. Teach children how to trace their hands and feet with a hand and foot reindeer. The children trace their hands on brown construction paper, cut them out for the antlers, and trace their foot on lighter brown paper for the face. Use black and red construction paper to cut out eyes and nose.

Children can take home homemade ornaments for their Christmas tree, cutting out pictures from old Christmas cards and pasting them onto jar lids. Hot glue string onto the ornament so it can be hung. For a textured Christmas project, children can cut out Christmas tree shapes from felt and paste "ornaments" on the tree using cotton balls, glittery effects, and tissue paper.

Other Holiday Art
For Hanukkah, children can create a milk carton dreidel by folding the top of a half-pint milk carton down so that it make a dreidel shape when turned upside down. Mixing glue and paint, the children paint the carton and let it dry. Afterward they can paste the printed out Hebrew letters onto the carton and stick a pencil through the center to complete the dreidel. Explain the symbols and how to play.

For a Kwanzaa art project, children cut out squares from red, green and black construction paper to create a paper Kwanzaa candle; explain the meaning behind the colors. Kids can cut out two ovals for corn, which represent children and the future, and paste them underneath the candle to create a candle holder. Talk to the kids about the symbols of Kwanzaa as they work.