While you might be lucky enough to be surrounded by a beautiful white winter wonderland, where we are, snow is a bit of a rare guest. Instead, our winter palette leans towards various shades of grey, with wind and rain.
But here’s the thing I’ve discovered – the enchantment of winter isn’t just about the snow. Our winter may not be the classic snowy scene, but it’s filled with its own charm and activities for kids and parents alike.
Whether your children are eager to play outdoors or prefer the warmth of indoor activities, this post is your go-to resource for making the most of winter without snow. Keep this list handy for lively outdoor adventures or cosy indoor escapades. Smiles and laughter during the chilly days will be guaranteed!
Ideas to spend time outside
Go for a cycle around your area or try roller-blading.
Play hide and seek in your garden or the local park. Just remember to establish the boundaries where you are going to hide.
Make an obstacle course in your garden. Sticks, buckets, ropes, hula-hoops, everything’s allowed!
Explore your local parks and woods. No matter how small, there are always hidden gems to find there. Trees for climbing. Tyres to swing on. Little streams to play in.
Have a hot chocolate outside. It tastes sooo much better when you feel the chill of the air and the warmth of the chocolate. We often take a thermos of hot chocolate or fruity tea with honey for our winter walks.
Look for animal trials and listen and copy the animal’s noises.
Go for a night walk with torches. Wintertime is perfect because your ‘night’ could start very early for younger children.
Play with glowing sticks in the night. Make patterns, pictures and write messages in the air.
If you can get hold of glowing-in-the-dark stickers, stick them on a ball and play football or handball in the dark.
Take your teddy bears on a walk.
Make a bonfire and cook toffee apples.
Try star-watching with a twist. Gather your explorers on a starry night and start creating new universes. Everyone chooses their very own star, which becomes a new world. What is up there? Describe the landscapes, who lives there, what they do every day etc. Maybe your star is the doorway to a bustling space market where planets trade stories instead of goods, or perhaps it’s a quiet sanctuary where celestial musicians compose melodies that echo through the galaxy. The sky is not your limit anymore.
Just watch clouds and name as many shapes as your imagination lets you. You may sometimes see some amazing spectacles up there.
Prepare a family photo session. Try funny poses, and involve everyone in taking pictures, they can have very funny ideas for set-up.
Prepare your own shooting range. Carton boxes, empty cans, plastic bottles or wellies become your targets and small stones, or heavier twigs could be your weapons.
Walk on the rope. Spread a rope a scarf or ribbon on the ground. It can be drawn on asphalt or with a stick on the ground and it doesn’t have to be straight! You can walk along such a “rope” one foot at a time or on all fours, on toes, on heels, backwards, sideways… Of course, you have to be careful not to fall into the abyss!
Build a big winter den. Our other version of this classic activity is building tiny houses for little forest dwarfs (or elfs or fairies depending on where you are from 😉 ) We use the bottom trunks of trees which have lots of twisty roots for rooms and fill them with furniture made from sticks, leaves and moss. They could be very elaborate or simple depending on your children’s skills. Our creations are on the simple side – a couple of sticks with moss on top for beds, interesting twigs for benches, pieces of bark for wardrobes and stones of different sizes for tables and chairs.
Make some nature pictures using twigs, stones, leaves, pines, moss and other nature-provided art supplies.
Grab some chalk and draw on your driveway or patio.
Go on a treasure hunt adventure. The classic one with a map and you all walk together or… try a treasure hunt with a twist! Divide your troops into 2 groups – team A and team B.
Team A will be setting the path and leaving clues for Team B to follow. Using chalk, sticks, and twigs they’ll mark the trail with arrows, leading the way for Team B. To add an extra layer of excitement, leave letters along the trail. Each letter contains a mini-challenge that Team B must conquer before moving forward. Challenges can be as easy or as tricky as you desire – from hopping on one foot for ten seconds to solving riddles that unveil the next arrow’s direction.
Team A’s ultimate goal is to either simply be found by Team B or hide a treasure for them to discover. If it’s a treasure hunt, Team A conceals a surprise at the final destination – perhaps a box of goodies, a collection of nature treasures, or a note declaring them the champions of the hunt.
Have fun outside my friends, but if the weather is really miserable, windy or rainy, read on for some indoor fun!
Ideas to spend time inside
Prepare a theatre play with some props and costumes with real people, or use puppets.
Make a fashion show in your living room. Use your clothes, and dressing-up supplies or for extra fun design outfits out of aluminium foil.
Build a massive town from blocks and add train tracks and stations. Later you can make a video with trains like this one!
Build some new inventions and creations from recycled scraps.
Take out the old good play dough, but for the older children, try plasticine! You can model a lot of interesting creations or you can try plasticine pictures.
Then make an animation using your creations. Look at ours here!
Plan a photo session with funny gadgets. Sunglasses, hats, scarfs, cardboard cut-outs, brooms and mops, yarn of wool for wigs or jewellery. Let your kids’ imagination rule.
Make a den from pillows, blankets, chairs, and sofas.
Make soap bubbles.
Set up a hospital or an animal rescue center.
Bake and decorate homemade goodies.
Make dinner together. Challenge your family to create some “food art”.
Play classic hide and seek or hide an object and lead your children to it providing verbal clues using the terms “hot”, “cold”, “cooler”, and “warmer.” “Warmer” means the seeker is getting closer to the hidden object while “Cold” and “Cooler” means the seeker is moving away from the hidden object. “Hot” means the object is found J
Play the game of Articulate or Charades.
Play country/city game. Check out this post with instructions how to play it!!
Build puzzles together.
Create a house, a boat or a rocket from a huge cardboard box.
No snow? No problem – make some funny frozen sculptures in your freezer using interesting moulds!
Plan a movie night with snacks. Set some blankets or sleeping bags or use the den you have built earlier to make a cosy watching space.
Sit down for a session of family scrapbooking. Gather colourful supplies: pictures, scrapbooking paper, stickers, markers, washi tape, and embellishments. Include small keepsakes like ticket stubs, postcards, or dried leaves and flowers. Fold-out sections, flip-up flaps, and pockets to tuck away special notes make it extra interesting. Have a look at this post to see how this could become your family tradition!
Work on family newspaper/magazine. Conduct some interviews, write funny stories about family members, add some photos and drawings and make it into a memorable, flashy tabloid.
Prepare for a disco/ karaoke night.
Build some houses out of a deck of cards.
Build domino creations, the longer and fancier the better. We don’t have dominos and use rectangular wooden blocks for this purpose.
Paint on rocks or wooden pieces.
Play a chocolate game where kids can eat as much chocolate as they can during their turn but… there’s a catch. You need a bar of chocolate for this game, 2 dice, a hat, scarf and gloves plus a knife and fork. Sit down at the table with a chocolate bar in the middle. The player with the dice attempts to roll a pair of sixes. If successful, he gets to put on the hat, scarf, and gloves and then dive into the chocolate cutting it with a knife and fork and eating as much as they can until another player rolls a pair of sixes.
Draw in the dark. Painters sit with their canvas in the dark room and the instructor tells them what they are going to draw! For example: first draw a house, then add a chimney. Next, draw a smoke coming out of the chimney and add some clouds. Now draw flowers in front of the house and so on. The more complicated the instruction the funnier the pictures become.
Play ping-pong (known also as table tennis…). Don’t have a table tennis table? Not to worry, use your kitchen table, put some rope in the middle for a net and use heavy books for rackets.
I hope these winter activities will help you to booste grey winter moods and create heartwarming memories that thaw even the frostiest days. Embrace the magic of winter!
