Fun snow activities for preschoolers and up.

This week has brought us snow here in the U.K. Our garden was looking rather picturesque until we decided to do some all important play!

My girls absolutely love it when it snows. They enjoy seeing their little footprints, they love to feel how cold and fluffy snow can be with their hands and they enjoy making and dressing up snowmen!

Now that my girls are 1 and 3 I also put a couple of activities out for them to try whilst playing in the snow. The activities are there as an option and they aren’t made to complete them but I can add that they do always attempt them.

Ever since my eldest daughter was little she has always enjoyed playing with water. Her little sister also loves to play with water! I’ve tried different activities with water including dying the water, adding different oils and cooking essences to vary the smell of water too. We transferred what we do with water play and in the activity below I filled containers with different coloured liquid. I used food colouring but you could add water colour paints to your water to make different colours too. I then added a child friendly pipette and the girls could then experiment changing the colour of the snow with their tubs of coloured water. The water that looks red was actually meant to be pink and I guess it does look a little eerie but hey it stands out. 😉 if you haven’t got pipettes you could also use medicine dispensers that you find in children’s bottled medicines.

Mark make and draw in the snow. My 1 year old did this activity and she really enjoyed it. I just put a selection of paintbrushes out including some especially designed for ickle hands which I bought from the Early Learning Centre.

Collect all the things you would use at the beach and take them out in the snow. Both my girls really enjoyed scooping up the snow and creating snow castles.

If children were finding it a bit too cold you could always bring the snow indoors. By using large storage boxes or trays you could set up a snow hunt placing plastic letters or numbers (fridge magnets perhaps) inside for children to find. You could also set up a small world with the snow using little animals or figures that you have at home.

If you haven’t had snow you could always use alternatives.

Shaving foam! You can buy shaving foam quite inexpensively and you don’t need to use the whole can at one time. I added little figures to my set up pictured above and we read San Usher’s book Snow which my 3 year old really enjoys.

You could also use white rice or cotton wool to set up a snow scene. I used both things in the small world play set up below so that the girls could feel and explore different textures.

There is so much fun to be had with snow! If you would like more recommendations on snowy books do check out my blog post on Snowy reads for preschoolers and up.

Happy reading and playing!