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Fun Indoor Winter Activities For Kids When It’s Too Cold Outside

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While the winter is an exciting and festive time of year, it can also be too cold for kids to play outside. As you’re met with groans and “why nots?” never fear, teachers! There are plenty of inspiring winter-themed activities to have fun with indoors. This list will help keep kids entertained and learning for days to come.

Make Season-Themed Food and Drinks

Kids love food and they love the holiday season. Combine the two and you get a great hands-on project that could teach them some important values. Letting them take the wheels and create adorable food helps boost their creativity and independence. Snack on chocolatey snowflakes by letting them fold and cut out a snowflake design with a pair of safety scissors on a tortilla, and then top it with a hot cocoa-inspired spread. Children will also love making hot chocolate in a jar they decorate as a reindeer or snowman that they can give as a gift to a parent, sibling, or other loved one.

Read a Winter Book

Reading and simply listening to stories is great for all ages because it sparks imagination in addition to improving kids’ reading and listening skills. For younger children, there are plenty of great winter-inspired books you can read to your classroom, including The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, Bunny Slopes by Claudia Rueda, and Blizzard by John Rocco. For teens, try young adult favorites such as Hunted by Meagan Spooner or Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones, but instead of reading it aloud, have the children act out the parts.

Bring the Snow Indoors

If the weather is far too cold to enjoy the snow outdoors, bring the snow indoors for some creative activities. One fun idea is to create an ice and salt melting experiment. After freezing large bowls of water to create ice, place them on cookie sheets and sprinkle salt on top. Once they’ve melted a bit, take the liquid watercolor and spray it on top to see where the ice has melted and how ice can create tunnels. Another activity is bringing snow inside to paint with. Place white paper on cookie trays and spread cut out colorful tissue paper on top. Once the color is distributed evenly, place the snow on top and let it melt to spread the dye from the tissue paper to the white paper. Once it’s completed, it will leave your students with a lovely watercolor-like painting that’s perfect for displaying at home in a frame or on the refrigerator.

Create Holiday Crafts

Get ready for the holiday season by creating some crafts your students can use to decorate their homes. This is the perfect opportunity to let your pupils unleash their artistic side. Create a paper cottage with shoe boxes and paper cut-out decorations, decorate a Santa hat with DIY puffy paint, or construct a scarf. Regardless of which holiday craft you pick, your students will enjoy creating something they can bring home to help them celebrate the season.

Find Educational Activities Online

Give your students a break from their traditional lessons by finding unique educational experiences online. For example, students will love researching their family history, finding uplifting news stories to share with the class, or even learning about holiday traditions in other countries. Even seemingly just-for-fun activities will improve students’ research and study skills, and they’re a nice way to break up a long day of teaching for educators.

You and your kids can beat the cold weather with any of these indoor activities. Not only will you and your students keep warm, but they’ll also learn new things, be entertained for hours, and even create keepsakes they’ll treasure for years to come.

About the Author

Carrie Spencer created The Spencers Adventures to share her family’s homesteading adventures. On the site, she shares tips on living self-sufficiently, fruit and vegetable gardening, parenting, conservation, and more. She and her wife have 3 kids, 2 dogs, 4 cats, 3 goats, 32 chickens, and a whole bunch of bees. Their goal to live as self-sufficiently and environmentally-consciously as possible.