Learning In An (Indoor) Winter Wonderland

Y'all, it's cold outside. Like, stay in the house, I'm not going out, we can make it one more day without going to Target cold. I know 25 doesn't seem cold to a lot of people, but when you are used to seeing above 90 most of the year 25 is in fact cold. So it's the perfect time for some winter fun and learning in the snow, right? Haha. We live in Texas...

We've had snow in the forecast 3 or 4 times now, but we never get it, or no more than a few flakes. Bug kept asking last night when we were going to play in the snow. Poor baby, I guess we can just pretend and watch Frozen again, right?

We have had some freezing weather which has let us experiment with ice a bit which was fun, but we were in desperate need of some faux snow play. Here is what we came up with for those of you who are snowless like us, or who actually have snow but need some indoor activities to keep the kids warm!

One super-easy project we did that led to lots of unintentional fun was to freeze water outside. It hardly ever freezes here, so this was actually a big deal for us. We froze the water in four see-through plastic cups, with a different amount in three of them. We added salt to the last one to compare freeze times, which led to some cool discussion.

She wanted to check her ice every ten minutes!

When it was (finally!) frozen, we got to play with it. We looked at all the crystals that formed which was really neat. It's crazy to think of the little things like this that we miss every day.

We took the ice out of a few of the cups and put it in the bathtub to observe it melting. We also did this on a slower scale with a dropper and some hot water. (We might have played with some food colors to make it a little more exciting...)

This was fun, but they liked melting it in the bath much better. They wanted fast results!

Another colorful ice activity we had tons of fun with was painting with colored ice. We filled an ice cube tray with water, added a few drops of food coloring to each section, covered it with plastic wrap (to keep the sticks sort of upright), stuck a popsicle stick in each section, and set it outside overnight. The next day the kids had a blast watching it "skate" over their papers! It began melting pretty quickly, but it was still cold enough to stick it back outside and they were ready to use again after naptime. You could also just stick them in the freezer.

He was watching her to make sure he was doing it right. Sometimes it's scary how much they learn by watching others!

Okay, now to the warm activities! After all that ice play we needed a little heat, so we grabbed the cocoa and marshmallows. This was the perfect activity because all three kids got to play. Big Guy was challenged to build a 3D structure out of marshmallows and toothpicks. Bug got to practice her shapes with them (This is a great time to introduce edges and vertices.), and Bear just had fun putting the marshmallows onto the toothpicks. Great for fine motor development! Just don't ask me how many marshmallows were eaten, or how much cocoa was spilled...

When an activity works for an 11, 3, and 1 year old all at the same time, you know it's a winner.

Our marshmallow shapes. And our chalkboard table that needs some serious attention!

Another great idea for marshmallows was to glue them to a letter M. We are really working on letter recognition so this was perfect! You could also just have your kids lay them on top of large letters to trace them for a recognition activity or center. It was also really good practice for the "just a dot, not a lot" rule.

She was concentrating so hard!

Another way we practiced our letters was using these winter letter and number cards I have in my TeacherspayTeachers store. I printed them on blue card stock and we use them for lots of activities, including spelling practice, and I use them as a number line. Here is our current sensory bin (winter blue) with our letter of the day.

Using our sensory bins on a sheet makes cleanup so much easier!

We are also working on number recognition. Bug has her counting down, but doesn't yet know what each number looks like. We numbered some foam snowmen and practiced ordering them. We have our number line displayed on our board, so she could look at that if she needed help. It was really useful.

She definitely liked having a "helper" to look at while ordering her numbers!

After the snowmen were in order, she got to count "snowballs" to put on each snowman. She lined them up so straight and said "They look like his buttons!" It still amazes me when they make observations like this on their own.

Of course someone thought she needed help with her snowballs!

We also did some fine motor practice by having a snowball race across the table. She did a great job aiming the straw to get it across, and we even practiced blowing it off the table and trying to get it to land into a bucket.

Who doesn't love a snowball race?

We're also still playing with these snowballs I posted about on my Christmas Activities post. We have thrown them into buckets, through hula hoops, and the kids may or may not have had a few indoor snowball fights with them.

What is your favorite winter activity for staying warm?