Outdoor Winter Activities for Kids

BEST SNOW DAY ACTIVITES FOR KIDS

As winter begins to stretch out, most of us have exhausted the classic outdoor activities; snow forts, sledding, building a snowman, and ice skating. Here are some new ideas for simple winter activities that require little to no props or prep work. Your kids will be begging to stay outside longer with these fun snowy day activities.

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SNOW MAZES

My family has spent hours creating snow mazes. It’s a favorite activity when fresh snow is blanketing the ground.

• Create a start line

• Shuffle your feet to create paths through your maze

• Add dead ends, turns, and loops for an additional challenge

• End at the finish line

• Have fun taking turns trying each others mazes

• Play a tag game of cat and mouse or old school pac man

HOT WHEEL SNOW TRACKS

Take your indoor toys outside. Utilizing your hot wheel tracks, build an epic hot wheel snow track in the snow. Mound up snow, cover sticks to make tunnels or even make a snow village with trees using broken pine branches. Then race your hot wheel cars down steep drops, through tunnels and into the snow.

Hot Wheel Track in the Snow

SNOW LANTERNS (Snolykta)

In Sweden, one of the first activities children learn on a snowy day is how to build snow lanterns. All you need is the perfect packing snow and tea lights. Check out the full tutorial How to Build a Snow Lantern. I advise starting with a small size lantern for younger children while learning this skill.

Snow Lanterns

• Start off by packing snow into tight snowballs

• Build a circular base of snowballs

• Continue building until you have a pyramid

• Leave an opening for tea lights

• Once dark, light the tea lights and close off the lanterns by finishing placing snowballs on top

NIGHT HIKES

Night Hikes

When the moon is full and stars are bright, head outside for a magical night. A change of routine can add some thrill and excitement to any activity.

• Pay attention to the moon phases, head out when the moon is full. The sparkling snow from the moon’s illumination will make it magical and provide plenty of light. Artificial light will effect your night vision, so try to avoid using lights.

• For further study, learn about the special names given to each month’s full moon ie. January is the Wolf Moon.

• Grab a blanket or a telescope and do some stargazing. We bought this Telescope and it has fostered continued interest in astronomy with our kids.

• Try out a free constellation app like StarWalk Kids to learn about the constellations.

Telescopes are a great way to enjoy winter skies

SNOW FAMILY

This is a fun challenge for your children to build their own personalized snowman. One of the best parts is to come up with clothing and articles that best represents them, whether it be adding a soccer ball, pigtails, hats, a dog etc. Build a snow family together and then allow each child to decorate their specific snowman.

A snow family served as our birth announcement with my second child

One year we created a snow family, which actually served as our birth announcement for our friends and family. Look close at the heart on the snow mama’s belly!

OBSTACLE COURSE

• Create an obstacle course in the snow with a start and finish line

• Mound snow up for hurdles to jump over

• Zig Zag a path to run through or hop to footprints spaced apart

• Throw snowballs at a tree

• Make a snow angel

• Add a sled pull with a younger sibling

FREEZE YOUR CLOTHES

If you’re faced with a stretch of cold temps in the future, than it’s an ideal time to have fun with the neighbors and freeze your clothes. This is a great dual activity as you can use it as a science experiment and an educational tool to teach children about the importance of dressing appropriately for cold weather. Plus its just fun! Here is the full tutorial on how to make a frozen family.

SNOW BOWLING

If you have some snowy days in the forecast where temperatures are below freezing, it is the perfect time to make these vibrant and colorful frozen ice balloons. Then by utilizing simple household materials you can make a bowling lane and use your ice balls to have fun snow bowling! Here are the full directions to make these fun ice balls for frozen ice bowling.

Winter Snow Bowling with frozen ice balloons.

Hope these ideas inspire you to get outside and enjoy winter! Don’t forget the hot chocolate afterwards!

As you can tell, we spend a lot of time enjoying the outdoors in winter. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to make all the decisions about what snow gear to purchase. Here is my honest recommendations from a Michigan mother of four children on Winter Essential Snow Gear for Kids.

FINAL THOUGHTS

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