Winter time

With the weather turning colder and wetter, we are always looking for fun things to do indoors (and out) so we don't go so stir crazy. Here are a few that we have tried or plan to try. I found some of these in a winter activity book that we checked out at the library. Go check one out at your library or you can always google "Christmas crafts for kids" or "winter activities for kids." You get the gist.

-Make a reindeer out of your kids' hands and a foot: trace your foot on brown paper for the head, trace both hands and cut them out for the antlers, then let your kids add googly eyes and a nose

-Fill spray bottles with water and a little bit of food coloring, then let your snow covered yard be your canvas and let the kids spray a colored picture on the snow.

-Make snowflakes out of pipe cleaners. Make an "X" with two pipe cleaners, then wrap one around the middle to make the general form. Cut pipe cleaners in half and wrap them around the outer edges of the snowflake:

-Make a snowman out of an old sock. Stuff the sock with dried beans or batting. Then tie a piece of fabric or ribbon around the middle to make the two balls that form the snowman and it looks like the scarf. Fold the top of the sock down to look like a hat, add eyes, buttons, or whatever, get creative!

-String popcorn garland. You can get needles with blunt ends so they aren't such a poking hazard.

-Play follow the leader in the snow, but you have to follow in the leader's footprints. 

-Snowball toss. Make a large ring out of snow, or bring out a laundry basket, make a bunch of snowballs, and then toss them into your basket. See how far back you can make it from.

-Make a Christmas countdown (Ashlee already suggested this a while back, but I thought I would remind you). Tape/staple strips of paper together, enough to take one off every day until Christmas. Kids love the visual reminder of how close Christmas is getting.

-Build a snow castle or a mini one for your dolls/action figures.

-Make pictures out of mini marshmallows and Elmer's glue. Marshmallows make really cute snowmen.

-Use dark blue/red/black construction paper as your background and use white crayons to draw your own winter wonderland.

-Make Christmas wreaths. Cut out the middle of a paper plate, cut leaves out of green construction paper, and holly berries out of red and glue them all to your paper plate.

-Act out the nativity. Let your kids decide which part they want to be, let them create their own costumes, and then narrate while they act out.

-Decorate sugar cookies, then as a lesson in sharing/serving deliver some to your neighbors.

-Write letters to Santa Claus. Our kids can't write yet so we let them color what they wanted and add stickers of things that they wanted. You can always cut toys out of ads and glue them on too.

-Before Christmas is also a good time to clean out your toy bins to make room for new toys that you get for Christmas. Talk to your kids about how we can help every child have a Merry Christmas and get gifts by donating some of our own toys. Then with the help of your children pick out toys that they are ready to give up. 

-A nice family outing is to go Christmas light looking. If you feel like bundling up you can pick a nice neighborhood to go walking through or go grab a cup of hot chocolate and take a drive.

-Our library also holds periodic craft days for kids. Check out what is locally available for you as far as Winter festivals, winter activities, etc go. Story time is also a great way to get out of the house on cold days.