Teaching Winter in a Warm Country: What Happens When Kids Have Never Seen Snow
The cotton balls were supposed to be snow. I dumped them onto the classroom table one humid November morning, and my five-year-olds poked at the pile with cautious fingers. Amir, who had lived his whole life twenty minutes from our school in Kuala Lumpur, picked one up and frowned. “It’s not cold,” he said. Sofia, who had moved from Moscow the year before, nodded. “Real snow is cold and crunchy. This is just fluffy.”
I had taught in Michigan for six years before moving to Malaysia. I knew what winter looked like from a child’s perspective: boots by the door, breath fogging in the air, the particular silence of a snow day. I had also assumed that children everywhere knew winter from books, movies, and holiday songs. But standing in that air-conditioned classroom while the outside temperature climbed toward 32°C, I realized the gap between the story of winter and the lived experience of it.
“What does winter look like?” I asked the class. Hands shot up. A snowman. Christmas trees. Hot chocolate. Ice skating. One child said, “Winter is when the aircon is too cold.” Everyone laughed. But he wasn’t wrong. In a warm country, winter isn’t a season you see. It’s a season you import through screens and stories.
For young children, concepts are built from concrete experience. They learn “hot” by touching a warm bowl of soup, “soft” by petting a cat, “cold” by holding an ice cube. When we teach winter only through pictures of snow, we ask them to memorize a label without a sensory anchor. That’s why Amir could recite the word “snow” but still be surprised that cotton balls weren’t cold. His brain had filed snow under “white stuff” rather than “frozen water that feels like this.”
This isn’t just a science problem. It shows up in reading comprehension, too. A story about a child building a snowman can be decoded perfectly but understood only halfway if the reader has never felt snow crunch underfoot. It shows up in emotional moments, too. Children from colder countries may miss the winter they knew. Local children may feel that their own rainy season, with its warm afternoons and sudden downpours, doesn’t count as “real” winter. Both experiences are true, and both need room.
So I changed the lesson. Instead of starting with snow, we started with our own weather. Every morning, we checked the temperature and drew a simple symbol: sun, cloud, rain. We noticed that November in Kuala Lumpur was cooler in the mornings, maybe 24°C, and that the rain came more often in the afternoon. “Is this winter?” I asked. Some said yes. Some said no. We wrote both answers on the board.
Then we built a comparison table. On one side, “Winter where I live.” On the other, “Winter in other places.” I brought in a scarf, a raincoat, a pair of mittens, an umbrella, and a small bowl of ice. The children sorted which items they would use here and which they would use in a snowy place. Amir put the mittens on the “other places” side, then tried them on anyway. “My hands are sweaty,” he announced. That was a data point.
I also asked families to share winter memories from anywhere in the world. One grandmother from Korea sent photos of making kimchi in the cold. A father from Canada recorded a short video of shoveling his driveway. A local family talked about the monsoon rains and how they ate hot pot when the evenings were damp. The children brought in small items: a postcard, a pair of wool socks, a recipe card. We put them on a table with a paper sign that said, “Winter looks different in different places.”
The most useful moment came from a video call with my nephew in Michigan. He stepped outside and showed us his breath. He picked up a handful of snow and squeezed it into a ball. The children gasped. “Does it hurt?” asked Sofia. “Can you eat it?” asked another. He answered patiently. Then he asked, “What does winter feel like there?” The class went quiet. Finally, Amir said, “It feels like rain and aircon.” My nephew nodded. “That’s a kind of winter, too.”
That phrase became our anchor. Not “real winter” versus “fake winter,” but different kinds. When we read books set in snowy places, I stopped expecting every child to draw a snowman in response. Instead, I asked, “What would you need to wear if you were there?” and “What would you need if you were here?” For a child who has never seen snow, that question is still answerable. It builds empathy and comparison without pretending.
For parents in warm countries, the same approach works at home. If your child asks why there’s no snow, you don’t need a full meteorology lesson. You can say, “Snow comes when it’s cold enough for water to freeze in the sky. Where we live, it doesn’t get that cold.” A globe and a flashlight can help: shine the light on the equator and show how the sun’s angle changes. Keep it simple. Then bring it back to the body. “What does cold feel like to you?” Maybe it’s the freezer, maybe it’s the mall in December, maybe it’s a cold drink. That’s the beginning of understanding.
If your child feels sad about missing snow, don’t rush to fix it. “I know. It’s okay to wish you could see it.” Then offer a small substitute that fits your climate. Make ice in the freezer and let them hold it with a towel. Read a book about snow and then make a paper snowflake. Have a “cool morning” breakfast outside if the weather allows. The goal isn’t to recreate a northern winter. It’s to help your child build a relationship with the season they actually have.
In the classroom, the cotton balls are still there. Now they sit next to a bowl of ice, a rain gauge, and a small globe. Amir still says winter is “aircon weather,” but he also knows that in Michigan, winter means boots and shovels. I’m not sure he fully understands why the seasons change. I’m not sure I did at five, either. But last week, he asked if we could put water in the freezer to make our own snow. We’re going to try. It will probably just be ice. That might be enough.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Teaching Winter in a Warm Country: What Happens When Kids Have Never Seen Snow