The First Cold Morning
A seasonal story about the morning you can suddenly see your own breath.
A short seasonal story for autumn and winter about the first cold morning of the year, with a simple thing to try outside afterwards. Suits ages 3 to 7.
The short version
- Three minutes to read.
- Then go outside and breathe out. That is the activity and it costs nothing.
- Best read on an actual cold morning — it lands completely differently in July.
- Age
- Ages 3–7
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Where
- Either
One morning, Ada breathed out and her breath came out white.
She stopped on the step and did it again. White again.
"Look," she said. "I am a kettle."
She breathed out slowly and made a long thin cloud. She breathed out fast and made a short fat one. She breathed out while walking and left a little trail behind her, like a very small train.
The grass had gone crunchy overnight. The car had a white skin on the windows. There was ice on the top of the water in the bird bath, thin as a crisp, and when Ada pressed it with one finger it went CRICK and broke into pieces.
"It was not like this yesterday," said Ada.
"No," said her dad. "It happened while we were asleep."
Ada thought about that all the way to the gate: that the whole garden had changed in the night, quietly, without anybody watching, and had been waiting there all along for somebody to come out and notice.
Then she breathed out one more time, made one more cloud, and went to school.