Preschool Winter Activities and Crafts

With a little planning and the right tools, you can be spreading sunshine around your preschool winter activities and crafts for the kids for all the cold winter months. For those of us with small children, or teachers of small children, you know the challenge of keeping the kids from “cabin fever”.

To stay theme oriented, there are endless choices for art and craft ideas for your kids. I’m going to share a couple of my favorites.

No matter where you live, part of the fascination with winter is centered around the snow that stories are made of. When you are in the land of make-believe with a pile of art supplies, it is easy to generate the winter wonderland feeling even if the sun is out in full force.

Essential supplies for these activities are white paper, cotton balls, tissue paper, silver glitter, and anything else that will lend itself to winter activities.

Paper Snowman

Snowmen are a favorite winter theme. Make it as simple or as elaborate as you would like. I like to take three different sized paper plates, and have the kids decorate them with cotton balls. With the paper plates, you can easily put stick in for arms (and tape them in the back) and the durable nature of paper plates makes it possible to make real “coal” eyes and a carrot nose.

The kids have a blast making a real live snowman, and being able to use the actual materials from “Frosty the Snowman” give the kids a real thrill. The glitter can be used to give the gleam of snow, and kids just love glitter because it sparkles. This is a fun thing to keep hanging up over the winter months, since it doesn’t lose its value once the holidays are over.

Sugar Cubes Igloo

If you want to give your kids the experience of an igloo without the puddles from ice cubes, try using sugar cubes instead.

Have your kids stack and glue the sugar cubes in an igloo shape and glue them into the shape with a “mortar” of 2 egg whites and three cups of confectioners’ sugar.

Work alternately, and make sure the cubes stay staggered. Make sure you sprinkle sugar over the top for the finishing touches of your blizzard.

Don’t leave your little guys with just and igloo! Make sure to add some animals to the scene, and grab some of the dollhouse dolls out and wrap in some scrap fabric for an Eskimo look.

Leave your display out for everyone to enjoy! Use your creative embellishments to turn it into an igloo castle, and write a new fairy tale about the Eskimo princess. You can extend this activity as much as you want, and even the big kids can have fun with the preschoolers if you are working with a mixed lot of kids.

With a bit of research and imagination you can find plenty of things to do with your kids when they can’t go outside. And make sure that it’s a fun learning activity as well.

You can’t go wrong with these preschool winter activities and crafts that center around this sparkling, splendid time of year.