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Snowflake Bentley

Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley was the first known person to take detailed close-up photographs of snowflakes and document their features. Students will explore his life and photographs, then create a sketch of Bentley and/or snowflakes.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Paper

Steps

  • Step 1

    Have a discussion about the characteristics and properties of snowflakes. For example, no two are alike, but all have six sides. The reason they are hexagonal is due to the molecular structure of ice. A water molecule is made of two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom. When water freezes the molecules bond in a particular structure that forms a hexagonal lattice. Snowflakes are also symmetrical, displaying bothe rotational symmetry (the object looks the same when rotated) and reflectional symmetry (one side is the mirror image of the other side).

  • Step 2

    Read "Snowflake Bentley" by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and Mary Azarian, a Caldecott Award-winning book. It tells the story of Wilson Bentley (1865-1931), a meteorologist and photographer who was the first known person to take detailed photographs of snowflakes and document their features. He was fascinated by the beauty of snowflakes and devised a way to attach a camera to a microscope to photograph these structures. He is the reason why we know that no two snowflakes are alike. Except for technological advancements in the equipment used, the process of photographing snowflakes today remains the same.

  • Step 3

    Have students view some of Bentley's snowflake photographs. He took over 5,000 pictures of these structures that he called "ice flowers." Then ask them to create a drawing inspired by Bentley, his photography, and snowflakes.

  • Step 4

    Have students present their art and talk about what they learned about Snowflake Bentley as well as the math and science of snowflakes

Standards

LA: Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

LA: Read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grade level text complexity band independently and proficiently.

LA: Read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry, at the high end of the grade level text complexity band independently and proficiently.

LA: Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).

LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

MATH: Draw and identify lines and angles, and classify shapes by properties of their lines and angles.

SS: Identify and describe examples in which science and technology have changed the lives of people, such as in homemaking, childcare, work, transportation, and communication.

VA: Students will initiate making works of art and design by experimenting, imagining and identifying content.

Adaptations

Write simple instructions on how to create snowflakes. Several websites are available to assist you with this. Provide students with white construction paper to be used for cutting out snowflakes, each with a different pattern, using your written instructions.

Encourage small groups of students to create a precipitation poster illustrating what conditions in the atmosphere produce rain, snow, sleet, hail, and other forms of precipitation.

Invite students to investigation the inventor of the microscope.