These snowy day activities for kids give kids something different to do during the long, cold months of Winter. During the Wisconsin winters, I am constantly looking for ways to entertain my mini. We love to do the typical snow activities like build a snowman, have a snowball fight, and go sledding. However, we are also always looking for new activities involving snow. Occasionally there are some days in Wisconsin where it is too cold to go out and play in the snow. These days are the toughest on my mini. This is why sometimes we also like to bring the snow inside to her to play where it is warmer. See below to find three fun and exciting ways to enjoy the snow both indoors and outdoors this winter!
Indoor Snow/Snowman
Bringing snow indoors and making an indoor snowman is one of the easiest activities that you can do, yet it occupied my mini for a very long time. It is a great activity for days when it is just too cold and windy to go outside.
Using a large pan or bucket (I just used a 9x13in baking pan) go outside and scoop snow up until the pan is nearly full. Then you can bring the pan of snow inside and your mini can spend time just scooping up balls of snow and making their own snowman inside. We used chocolate chips for the eyes, mouth, and buttons and he was complete. So easy and quick.
Then this is where you can get creative and go with what your mini is into. My mini LOVES cars so we gathered up a bunch of hot wheels and she spent time driving the hot wheels around and burying/unburying them in the snow. You could use plastic dinosaurs and bury them and then unbury them like a paleontologist. You could have your little ones bury and unbury their hands, fill and dump out smaller cups and buckets, or even make a “snow castle” with sand toys.
There is an unlimited amount of things that you can put in the snow for your little to play with. This is such a great and easy activity and can be done multiple days in a row with new items introduced each day.
I would highly recommend putting a large bath towel underneath your bucket of snow for easy clean-up. Because the pan was so full when we did these snow activities some did spill out. The towel was great because it prevented the carpet from getting wet and made clean-up quick and painless.
*After this post, we decided to try snow in our water table and use it the same way as mentioned in the above post. It was super fun for the kids and they loved it this way as well.
Be sure to also check out our indoor name snowmen craft if you are having fun with a snowman theme!
Snow paint
This activity is another super quick and easy activity to throw together. This is an outdoor snow activity. We always have the ingredients around our house so it is a simple one to throw together in a flash. I do find our squirt bottles are pretty small so I would recommend investing in some larger squirt bottles if you want this activity to take up more time (or if you don’t want to have to spend time filling and refilling squirt bottles every few minutes).
Begin by taking three or four squirt bottles and filling them to the top with warm water. Add 5-10 drops of food coloring to the bottle depending on the bottle size as well as the desired color. Then give your minis the bottles and let them go outside and squirt them into the snow.
I showed my mini how to make hearts, stars, swirls, etc…However, she is 2 so we had a whole lot of colorful snow scribbles. I did use the squirt bottles with her and drew letters and numbers in the snow to practice letter and number recognition as well as her name to put a little more academic twist on it. She mostly just loved the fact that the snow was changing colors.
While this wasn’t a super long activity she definitely enjoyed herself. This would be a great activity to do with school-age children as well. They could really draw some fun snow pictures and use their creativity to create beautiful designs!
Blubber and Snow Activity
This is a great snow activity that has an academic twist to it. While focusing the past few weeks on arctic animals we decided to finish our week up with a blubber experiment. This is a great experiment to really help littles understand how arctic animals stay warm in the winter. They loved that they got to wear a “silly glove” and that it really helped to keep their hands warm.
This is an experiment I would use in the Kindergarten classroom every year back when I taught Kindergarten. The five-year-olds were the perfect age to understand the concept and were always so proud of the new vocabulary word “blubber.”
We started by gathering a big bowl of snow up and bringing it inside. Then we gathered two quart-size plastic bags and our ½ cup of coconut oil (or shortening). Because both coconut oil and shortening are both cooking fats in a solid form they work great for this activity. We dumped the shortening inside of one of the quart-size bags. Then we took the other one and pressed it inside of the first bag.
Depending on your littles you may need to then tape the bags together at the top with masking tape so that the shortening/coconut oil doesn’t spill out over the top. I didn’t end up doing this with my little but if you’re planning on letting them play a while you may want to add the tape to avoid any mess.
Have them put one of their hands inside of the “blubber glove” and insert it into the snow. Have them also insert their other hand that isn’t covered with anything and feel the difference. The hand in the blubber glove will stay much warmer. This shows them that the layer of fat or blubber on a penguin/polar bear/etc…is one way that they stay warm in the winter.
Overall this was also a pretty quick activity but with younger kids especially your activities tend to be pretty quick. Pair this activity with a great quality book on arctic animals and you have a fun and engaging little lesson for your mini. Mine thought it was pretty cool and wanted to wear the “blubber glove” instead of her normal gloves the next time we went outside to play in the snow!
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