This week, we’ve been exploring Winter themed activities on our shelves. The snow has come and gone here, and we’ve been able go out and play in the snow with our hats, mittens, and boots of course. So we have added these items to our shelves!
Our little one recently fell in love with the movie Frozen and that signature song, loves - loves snow and ensuring that her, Mama, Dada and grandparents have all of their winter gear on before heading outdoors!
Making snowballs with Grandma :)
Toddlers enjoy exploring, arranging, matching, building with and counting items and having independence to do so. These activities encourage a combination of sensorial, practical life, math and language skills. They are simple and fun and include some great printables for practicing dressing skills with winter clothing items.
Most of these items are from the dollar store, and for the printables you can print on cardstock with an extra step being to laminate it just so that it helps with durability. But cardstock will work just fine as well.
Here are the winter themed activities on our shelves this week!
Our toddler loves this Peppa Pig magnetic dress up set and enjoys naming each clothing item and mix and matching the outfits (especially because the items relate to episodes of the show). This includes winter clothing items as well. I had something similar to this with barbie dolls when I was a child, and absolutely loved it too!
Winter Clothing Dress-up:
So, when I came across these cute dress up activities on Pinterest by Teaching Mama I printed them on cardstock, laminated and added magnetic strips on the back that I got from my local grocery store to stick to this baking sheet.
*PLEASE ENSURE SUPERVISION WHEN CHILDREN ARE PLAYING WITH MAGNETS*
These matching coloured hats on penguins are adorable via Tot Schooling :)
Encourage words and language like "hat", and asking the names of colours + “what is this called?", "where does the green hat go?”, "where do you put your hat?", “on our head”, pointing to the card, or you or your childs head, etc.
Matching mittens – made out of felt, count, match and explore colours and/or use real mittens.
S is for snowflake:
Sandpaper letter S and snowflakes to mix, match and count (these clothespin snowflakes are adorable and come in different colours).
Foam snowflakes and stickers – great for pincer grip and fine motor skills.
S is for Snow:
Cotton balls (aka snow balls), ice cube tray or muffin tin, you can start with scooping the snow balls into the tray and/or move onto practicing pincer grip (great prep for later writing) using clothespins to pick up and transfer the cotton balls.
Shaving crème Winter scene:
Using winter animals, blocks, cubes, styrafoam balls, measuring spoon and add some cotton balls and different plates for transferring items and to play on. OHHH and of course why not add some ice cubes (you probably have many of these items around in your kids toy room!)
Art Activities:
Winter animals & clothing: All you need is paint like this Crayola washable paint (a must!). Our daughter loves owls and so we just went on a search engine, looked up some animals and printed out some animals and winter themed templates like mittens, add them to a container so that your little one can independently take each item out and put it back, and enjoy some painting. Add some stamps for some extra fine motor fun!
C is for c-c-c-cold: If you have followed along you know that my daughter and I (as well as my husband and her grandparents) love The Letter Factory! You can order it here on Amazon. Great for letter practice and recognition, catchy songs and repetition that combines a sound and object to match each letter. We added the Letter C for “c-c-cold” – I printed the colour card as well as the black and white. Practice the sound and colour it in. These cards are exactly like the letters from the movie, created by Project by Jess - find them to print here.
Check out our "Letter F" activities post here.
Books, books, books: add winter themed books to your childs activities shelf and/or bookshelf and encourage some reading time – allow your child to explore the pages on their own or even just pointing to the pictures asking your child “Where is the penguin?”, “Where is the snowman?,” or “what is this?” or “The weather is cold”, “where is the snow?/ "what colour is her hat?", “s makes a s-s-s- sound, s is for snow”, etc.
With each season comes new possibilities to explore both outdoors and indoors. By providing even just a few of these activities or ones similar to them, you can give your little ones a great opportunity to explore, gain some independence, and practice practical life skills, just by simply repeating these activities. They are learning practical skills including independence, and look forward to having their own space to learn in. Follow what your child is interested in, they will tell you. :)
Furthermore, many of these items you probably already have in your home or by just taking a quick trip to your local dollar store.
Hope that you have found some inspiration to add some winter themed activities to your childs playspace!
What are your little ones favourite winter activities?