Seasons of Learning: 3 Easy Indoor Activities to Do With Young Children When Winter Strikes

Feb 01, 2019

Has freezing rain turned everything to a sheet of ice? Is it so cold your face hurts the second you step outside? When winter brings its worst, it’s time to bring the fun indoors.

Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through The Arts has a few tips for making winter a time of joyful, meaningful learning that you can share with your child:

Snowbound? Recreate an adventure tale in your living room.

If the forecast says you’re not going anywhere for a few days, find a good book that you can revisit each day. Your child will wake up excited to find out what happens next, and intrigued to see how it can come to life. Check out The Mitten by Jan Brett, based on a Ukrainian folktale. The fanciful story follows a group of woodland critters who seek refuge from a bitter winter storm inside a cozy—but very small—mitten. For each animal you meet in the story, your child can imagine how it would move around the forest and then cram itself into the mitten. Explore sizes and shapes by using stuffed animals as the characters in the book and a bedsheet or pillowcase as the mitten. See how big each animal is, and whether it’ll be able to fit inside. Ask your child to show how they would feel if they were cramped inside that mitten with all those animals!

Dance along with the snowflakes!

You and your child don’t have to be outside in frigid temperatures to enjoy the fun and whimsy of falling snow. A kitchen nook or a picture window quickly becomes your house’s official snowflake observation station! Have children describe the movement of the snowflakes and recreate the motion with their bodies. Dance is a wonderful tool to help children learn direction, movement, and motion.

No puppets? No problem.

Just because you don’t have actual hand puppets, it doesn’t mean you can’t put on a show! From wooden kitchen spoons and clothespins to couch pillows and even your own fingers and hands, just about anything can come to life. Use your imagination! You and your child can create an entire world of characters with items around the house. Throw down a blanket or towel to make a snowscape, and create your very own story!