Fun & Easy Winter Crafts

Now that winter is here, we all need ideas for fun and easy winter crafts to keep our children entertained while we’re all cozy and warm indoors. What’s the best about these activities require minimal preparation and are super fun!

Snow People

Paper Towel Roll Snow Person:⠀

All you need is: paper towel rolls, construction paper (white, orange, and a variety of colors for accessories), scissors, glue stick, clear tape, and markers. (Optional: felt, pom-poms, pipe cleaners, and liquid glue)⠀

Cut paper towel rolls in different sizes. Then completely wrap and adhere white paper to the rolls to completely cover. Prepare pieces to decorate the snow person: carrot-shaped noses (orange paper cut into a triangle), arms (brown paper rectangles), ear-muffs (two circles and one long narrow rectangle), scarf (long rectangle to wrap around roll). If using pom-poms and a pipe cleaner to create ear muffs, and adult can help help with liquid glue. Next, draw on black dots to make faces. Get creative and add on different accessories like a scarf or earmuffs and body parts (arms and nose) or you can simply draw them on with markers.

As my daughter and I built our snow people, we gave them names and created our own characters. These snow people can be used as “puppets” to put on a winter-themed show or tell a story.

Paper Snow Person:⠀

All you need is: construction paper, markers, scissors, and a glue stick⠀

First, you’ll need to cut out varying sized circles from white paper for the snowperson body, accessories in different shapes for hat and scarf, and body parts (black circles for face and buttons, an orange triangle for a nose, and brown rectangles for arms). Then you can get to the fun part…assembling the snowperson by overlapping and gluing the circular white pieces together and then adding body parts and accessories.

Cotton Snow Person:

All you need is: construction paper, cotton, and glue

To make these, cut white circles, body parts, and accessories out of construction paper. Next, attach white circles to blue construction paper for the snow person base. Stretch out the cotton balls – this is super fun!! Squeeze some liquid glue to the top of the snowperson and then have your child attach on pieces of stretched-out cotton. Once the white space is filled with cotton, glue on accessories, and body parts.

Painting on Ice

I found this really cool activity by both @teaching2and3yearolds and @7daysofplay. My daughter and I both loved it so much!

All you need is: block of ice, watercolor paint set, brush and a tray

Fill a container with water and place in freezer overnight. Take out the slab of ice and place in a tray. To start off the activity, drip some water over the water color paint set and then let your child get started on painting the ice block. This was a fun activity for my daughter to see how the colors mixed and what happens when ice melts. Unlike in our picture, this works best when the slab of ice is flat, unfortunately I accidentally left the container tilted in our freezer, so it did not come out leveled. But it still worked out great!

We usually pair a winter craft with a snow or winter themed book. There are so many winter themed books for kids but two we enjoy are Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats and Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner.

Scavenger Hunt

For our winter themed indoor scavenger hunts, we’ve used Disney’s Frozen figurines or Artic animal figurines. Place the toys in safe areas around a room an adult will be sitting in for your kids to find. It’s helpful to create a visual sheet for your child to keep track of what they will need to find by either using stickers of the corresponding toy or drawing a picture of the toy they need to find.

Coloring

Coloring is always a good idea…for everyone! Bring out some color sheets, put on some music and let your little one’s creativity soar. I created a FREE winter themed printable and will have more available over time, so definitely check that out. Melissa and Doug also has really good free printables but my favorite resource is Wee Gallery for free color sheets. Your child’s finished colored pieces can be used as cards to send to family and friends or hung up for fun wall art for the winter season. 

Hope you enjoy these fun and easy winter crafts and activities this season. Stay safe!

Written by: Sona who is a mother, pediatrician and artist. You can find her over at @sona_sparkles for arts and crafts, parenting inspiration, DIY, recipes and more!!