There are lots of ways educators can use AI, and one of my favorites is to brainstorm and strengthen classroom activities. As the winter season approaches, integrating thematic activities into your classroom might be part of your plan. Creating engaging winter classroom activities is easier than ever thanks to the help of AI-powered tools.
With the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like a chatbot or AI-powered Chrome extension, you can gather ideas and create customized winter classroom activities. From generating festive music to creating stunning visuals, AI offers oodles of ways to bring the winter season into your lessons in any subject area.
Today on the blog, we’ll explore how you can use AI tools to save time as you create winter-themed learning experiences. I’ll highlight some favorite free and low-cost AI tools for teachers and share a few extra resources you might find helpful.
8 Ways To Use AI To Create Winter Classroom Activities
From chatbots like ChatGPT to image generation tools like Adobe Firefly, AI tools can save precious time for teachers. These tools can help us gather ideas, create supplemental resources, and design engaging learning experiences for students. We’re looking at a winter theme today, but if you’d like to explore more AI-themed resources, here are a few popular blog posts and a free download:
- 5 Ways to Use AI to Customize Activities for Students
- Chatbot Prompts to Help Support Student Creativity
- How Teachers Can Generate Images with AI
- FREE DOWNLOAD >> 60+ Time-Saving Prompts
Using AI in the classroom can bring a unique twist to traditional lessons. For example, in a science classroom, you might use AI to connect a biology topic to a seasonal occurrence. Or perhaps in a social studies lesson, you may use an AI image generation tool to create images depicting winter festivals around the world. The possibilities are endless, and I hope this list gives you a few ideas to help you get started.
Connect Lessons to Winter Themes
Customize lesson plans with the help of AI to reflect winter themes. You can use a chatbot like Gemini to make subjects like history or science relevant to the current season. You could also use ChatGPT or Claude to accomplish this task.
How does it work? Try this prompt: I am teaching [topic] to a group of [grade] students. I want to connect this topic to the winter season. Give me 5 ideas on how this topic connects to winter.
Find Winter Emojis
I love EmojiFinder, but I know it can take up precious planning time if you’re searching for the perfect emoji. Enhance classroom communications like your weekly newsletter or take a winter spin on student assignments by adding winter-themed emojis.
How does it work? Try this prompt: Give me 10 winter-themed emojis. Or try this prompt: Here is a list of resources I am going to share with students, add one winter emoji to each line [Paste list].
Create Wintry Music
Use AI-powered tools to compose winter-inspired music to share with students. You can ask students to guess the prompt to see if they can determine the winter connection. It’s a great way to set a wintry mood in your classroom and accompany different activities.
Winter-Themed Vocabulary
I love sharing tips for vocabulary instruction and you might have caught this podcast episode “How to Use Artificial Intelligence to Teach Vocabulary” or my Edutopia guest post on “Using AI to Support Vocabulary Lessons.” Visual learning is powerful, and you can use AI-generated images to help explain new vocabulary with a wintry twist. One of my favorite tools is Adobe Firefly, which you can use to create images.
How does it work? Try a prompt that describes a vocabulary word like “volcano” in a wintry place. Such as: A dormant volcano covered in snow.
Generate Winter Stories
Have AI craft short winter tales that students can read. You can use a chatbot tool like Gemini to create thematic, leveled passages to share with your students. The passages created by a chatbot won’t be perfect but are ready for you to tweak to make them the right fit for your group.
Create Winter-Themed Readers Theaters
Readers theater activities, where students each take on a role and read aloud a passage together, can be hard to find. You can use a chatbot like ChatGPT to create custom Reader’s Theaters to share with your students. You’ll also find more information, and the steps to follow, in this fall blog post, “How to Make Your Own Reader’s Theater Using ChatGPT.”
Fun Facts About Winter
During the winter season, you might decide to start each day by sharing a fun fact about winter. You can ask a chatbot to make a list of fun facts to share with your students. Like any fact-related content you ask a chatbot to generate, you’ll want to fact-check yourself with a quick Google search.
Inspire Winter Poetry
I’ve shared poetry ideas in the past, like this blog post with “13 Poetry Month Activities for Students.” For a wintry spin, create a handful of winter-themed images using an AI tool like Canva’s Magic Media. Then, ask students to choose one image and use it as inspiration for a poem.
Using AI to support instructional planning can certainly save you lots of time this year. Chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini can help you save time gathering and refining ideas. And AI-powered tools like the image generator Adobe Firefly can help you create supplemental resources, too.
Looking for more in-depth strategies and ready-to-use prompts for chatbots? Check out my book, EdTech Essentials: 12 Strategies for Every Classroom in the Age of AI, 2nd Edition. Whether you’re new to AI or looking to expand the way you use it, this resource is packed with practical advice. Check out the book today by heading to this landing page, or download the free study guide if you already have a copy.
