**UPDATED from November 2018 with more ideas for you.**
As the months creep closer to winter, kids start anticipating the first snow of the year. The world is full of all-new possibilities for fun when the first snow arrives. There are snowball fights, sledding, and snow forts to be made. There are so many fun snow-themed activities you can do with your kids.
Whether you love the snow or would rather stay indoors, there are plenty of activities you can do either outside or inside the house where it is warm.
Outdoor Snow Activities
Snow Coloring:
Kids of all ages will have a lot of fun coloring the snow. They can add color to their snowman or forts. They can make designs or pictures in the snow. It is super easy and makes playing in the snow so fun.
What You Need:
- Water
- Food coloring
- A plastic squirt bottle
Fill up the bottle with water, add some food coloring, and you are good to go. We have used dollar store ketchup and mustard bottles. A lot of times, we save the old dish soap bottles. They work well. If you want to cover a larger area with one color, you can try using a spray bottle on the mist setting. There are many options.
Snow Sculptures:
Instead of making a snowman, how about a snowcat or a snow truck? My kids are getting older and are beginning to experiment more with this. Personally, I think Calvin and Hobbes inspired them.
Whatever the inspiration, it is something different to give a try. I see so many possibilities. Kids can make various animals, monsters, or birds. They could make lots of inanimate objects like a table and chairs for them to sit in. It is a fun activity to keep the kids entertained for a long time.
Snow Ice Cream:
I know some people have strong feelings on this issue and don’t want their kids eating snow. If you don’t like it, skip this activity. We usually do this once a winter just for fun. Kids will enjoy making a treat out of snow. The recipe I have is from Happy Hooligans.
What You Need:
- around 10 cups of snow
- 1 (10 oz) can of sweetened condensed milk
- 1 tsp. vanilla
After it has just snowed, go outside and collect some of the untouched snow, and put it in a bowl. (Some people recommend putting a bowl out beforehand to collect it.) Add in the condensed milk, vanilla, and stir. Enjoy! It is best to eat your snow ice cream right away. You can store it in a freezer-safe container, but I can’t say any of us wanted to eat it the next day.
I found other recipes that use milk and sugar instead of condensed milk. I haven’t tried any of them. So I can’t say how they taste. Maybe we will try one of the other recipes this winter to compare the two.
Maple Snow Candy:
If you’ve read Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, you may remember the family collecting maple syrup and the kids getting a pan of snow to make maple snow candy. It is an old and simple recipe the kids will have fun making.
Again this recipe is by Happy Hooligans. It is a wonderful site, especially for preschool activities. I am listing her modified recipe to make a couple of snow candies. You can use 1-2 cups of maple syrup for a bigger batch.
What you need:
- 1/4 cup of real maple syrup
- a cookie sheet of clean fresh snow
- popsicle sticks (aka craft sticks)
- a candy thermometer
How to make it:
- Place the maple syrup in a pot and boil it. You want it to reach 235-240 degrees. It will form a soft ball when dropped in a glass of water.
- Scoop fresh snow on a cookie sheet.
- Pour the hot syrup on the snow and roll the candy onto the popsicle stick.
- You now have candy!
Snow Volcanos
What kid doesn’t enjoy watching a volcano explode?! Well, nows the time to take it outdoors. Over at Science Sparks, they provide some simple directions on building and erupting snow volcanos. Kids will have a blast. Plus, the mess is all outside!
Animal Tracking
Wintertime is a great time to get out in nature. When there is some snow on the ground, you can track animals pretty easily. Print off animal tracks for the types of animals you have in your area and set out on some trails in the woods. You never know what you’ll find. It could be deer, coyotes, or turkeys where we live.
It can even be fun to try to identify the cats and dog tracks in your neighborhood. Kids can see if they can tell whose dog it is by the size of their tracks. Around here, we have chicken tracks. We see which chicken was adventurous to come out first. 😆
Snow Maze
As a kid, my friend and I loved making snow mazes. We would sit in our sled on our knees and pull ourselves through the fresh snow and make paths. It kept us busy forever, and we’d try to follow the other person’s maze in our sled.
Another fun way can be with shovels. Kids can shovel out a maze. This would be a fun way to get the kids to help clear out the driveway.
If your kids don’t want a super strenuous way to make a maze, they can stomp out paths with their feet.
In all these different maze ideas, kids can have their buddies take a squirt bottle with colored water and have them “mark” the maze as they go.
Snow Catapults
Catapults are SO much fun! All you need is a couple of boards (one for the base and the other for the arm). Kids can make different-sized snowballs to catapult. It would make a great experiment. Kids could see how to make snowballs go further by making adjustments to their catapult contraption or the size of their snowballs.
Indoor Snow Activities
Making Indoor Snow:
Indoor snow is a super fun snow-themed activity. Kids LOVE playing with this. I did this with some 4-H kiddos. It was a little messy, but the kids had a blast! No one got wet and cold. It didn’t cut into our short meeting time.
The directions for this activity come from Huckleberry Love.
What you need:
- 3 cups of baking soda
- 1/2 cup of conditioner (We used an inexpensive brand.)
Mix the ingredients together, and it is ready to use.
I placed the “snow” in a shallow storage container and gave the kids plastic animals like polar bears, penguins and such to play with. They made snowmen and sledding hills.
Eventually, I placed some snow on separate trays for the kids to play on. It can be a little messy, but they smell good because of the conditioner.
The fun thing is when the kids are all done playing, give them squirt bottles with vinegar and they can watch as the vinegar reacts with the baking soda!
Snow Slime:
I haven’t met a kid that doesn’t like slime. Now I know some kids don’t like the feel of it, but they seem to still be fascinated with it. At Growing a Jeweled Rose, she has a pretty glittery snow slime.
What you need:
- 2 cups of glitter glue
- 1-2 cups liquid starch
Pour the glitter glue into a bowl. Add starch a little at a time until it feels how you would like it. That’s it. You could use regular glue and add glitter, too if you can’t find the glitter glue.
Winter STEM Snow Activities
If your family likes STEM Activities, there are quite a few that are snow-related. Here are a few good ones to check out.
Snowman Bridge
We LOVE doing different STEM challenges. One challenge we did a couple of years ago that was a lot of fun was the Snowman Bridge Challenge. Here kids are given a set of materials so they can construct a bridge to hold their snowman. The snowman can be made out of real snow or fake snow.
It is a lot of fun and very interesting to see what the types of bridges kids come up with.
Igloos
Not everyone can go outside and try their hand out building an igloo, but you can certainly create your own inside. I have found so many great options for building them inside. Here are two:
Build a DIY Marshmallow Igloo with Your Kids by Momtastic- Here kids use foam bowls for the igloo shape and mini marshmallows. It is a pretty easy activity.
Marshmallow Igloo STEM Challenge from Little Bins for Little Hands- Again, kids are using mini-marshmallows. However, in this project kids will use the lids for hot drink cups. Check it out.
Experiment
Experimenting with Snow– Over at Teaching Mama, she shares a fun indoor science experiment with snow. Kids find out what happens when snow is put in different liquids. This would be fascinating for kids to give a try.
Snow Paint:
Snow paint is a fun way to make great winter-themed pictures. Growing a Jeweled Rose (Can you tell my go-to sites?) has a snow paint recipe that will do the trick.
What you need:
- shaving cream
- chilled glue
- iridescent glitter or the fake snowflakes you can buy in winter
- peppermint extra (if you want it scented)
At Growing a Jeweled Rose, she recommends chilling the glue for a few hours. When the glue is chilled, mix equal parts glue and shaving cream together.
Next, add your peppermint extract and glitter. Mix it all together, and then you are done. Now you have paint that looks like snow.
Snow Scenes:
When I ran a preschool, I loved doing projects like this. It is simple and the kids had a lot of fun with it.
What you need:
- contact paper
- masking tape or painter’s tape
- cotton balls
- Q-tips
- cotton pads
- the little circles left over in a hole punch (I know, I am the weirdo that saves them in a container to use for projects.)
On the site No Time for Flashcards, I found the inspiration for this indoor snow activity. She placed a piece of contact paper in her window. I have placed it on the wall. It is up to you.
To make the snow scenes, cut a large piece of contact paper and tape it down, window or wall, with the sticky side facing out. Kids use the different materials you collected to stick them on the contact paper to make a picture. It is super cute.
So whether you want to take your snow play outside or stay indoors, these are some fun ways to enjoy the winter theme with kids.
What fun snow activities do you like to do with your kids? Share your ideas in the comments.
Happy Homeschooling!
