Winter is essentially fun especially if you have friends or siblings to play in it with. Snowball fights, sledding, and building snowmen are only a few of the fun activities during the winter season. Your kids will barely be in the house. They’ll be outside most of the day, playing in the snow.
But, what if the weather takes a turn for the worst and the supposedly fun winter becomes a raging blizzard? What do your kids do then? Your older kids will be stuck in front of the tv or computer playing video games or watching movies. Certainly, your toddlers won’t enjoy sitting around at all. They will get bored, irate and cranky. They’d be insisting on going out.
What you do is make their indoor confinement fun. There are quite a good number of fun indoor winter activities to keep your little ones entertained and happy.
Here are our top picks.
Paint the Snow
If your kids can’t play in the snow outside, then bring the snow to them. Open your front or back door and get a tub of snow. Grab some paint and your kids will surely enjoy the changing colors of ice!
Make Your Own Snowman
Cornstarch and shaving cream mixed to createa really fun to play with snow substitute. Although you can’t lie down and make snow angels, your kids can make snowmen out of it. A perfect way to still enjoy the “snow” sans the relentless cold.
Salt Painting
It’s pretty simple to make your own colored salt crystals. You can give it a more winter feel by coloring the salt crystals with different shades of blue. On the other hand, if your child wants the spring or summer colors in the cold winter, then let him have it!
Learn how to do a salt painting here.
Snowball Toss Game
You’d be surprised how a simple game like this can keep your kiddos entertained. They will come back to it from time to time. So, if it seems like they’re losing interest, don’t throw them away. Put them away and bring it back out after a fair enough amount of time.
Build a Snowman Game
Nothing like a race among the lucky ones. Roll the dice to see who can build a snowman the fastest! There will be lots of “Oohs” and “Yes!” during this play so be ready. Your kids can get competitive, but it’s all fun!
See how to make it here.
Marshmallow Snowman
Crafts are excellent ways to past time especially if your little tyke cannot go out to enjoy the fluffy white snow. You got to think of ways to keep him entertained amidst the weather confinement.
Simply take a few marshmallows, construction paper, glue and some cotton to make your own fluffy snowman.
Frozen Bubbles
This is perfect when the weather is a lot kinder, and it would be safe to step outside for a bit yet still too cold to stay out. I am still quite amazed by this project, and I’m sure your kids will be, too!
Click here to make this cool bubble!
Indoor Camping
I love the inflatable camp fire! It makes the entire activity even more real. You can also make smores in the kitchen, sleep in tents, sing songs around the campfire and eat packed meals by it. Set up your tents near the fireplace to get the campfire feel.
Certainly, this beats a normal cold winter night indoors.
Indoor Beach Party
Now that you’ve tried the indoor camping, take your indoor winter activities up a notch. Throw your family an indoor beach party complete with an inflatable pool ball pit, non-alcoholic punches, tropical looking snacks and a dance playlist!
Turn up the heater in the house, dress up in your beach attire and get ready for a day “by the beach”!
Snow Slime
White, sparkly and cold as snow. The recipe also calls for a touch of peppermint extract to give it a nice fresh scent. And, we all know peppermint is a classic smell of a wintery Christmas! Slime it up Frozen style with your kids!
Learn how to make your own slime here.
Paper Plane Target
Play it like you would play darts. Each target has corresponding points. The player who has the highest accumulated points win!
Have a prize ready to get your kids even more excited for the activity!
Sticky Spider Web Game
This is so simple yet so incredibly fun. Stretch some tape across two door posts to look like a spider web, ball up some newspaper, and voila, you have a spider web game for your kids!
Paper Plane Landing Strip
Have you ever seen the Paper Planes movie? It was quite a fascinating movie! This is quite similar to the paper plane target game and the movie itself. You know what would be even more fun? Let your kids watch the movie before the game!
Holiday Hat Ring Toss
Although you probably can find other alternatives for the game elements, it would be more fun and cheaper to create it with your kids. It’s fairly simple to make, so you don’t exactly have to be a DIY junkie to pull if off.
Find the full set of instructions here.
Mini Ice Hockey Rink
One of the coolest indoor winter activities on this list for me. This may be for kids, but I would not mind having this around to play with my friends!
Who would have thought water frozen in a baking tray, a few fuzzy strings and broken spoons would provide such fun! Learn how to make one here.
Marble Bowling
It’s very important to find fun indoor activities for your boys. They’re a tad harder to keep still especially if all you have under your sleeves are crafts. Here’s on that is both competitive and physically involved for your little men and all you need are pencil erasers and marbles!
Snowblower Game
As I have established, physical involvement makes indoor winter activities fun for your boys. Also for your girls, actually. Clear your table or countertop and turn into a snowblower arena!
Use some paper towel core, ping-pong balls and plastic cups as goals. Another brilliant idea would be to have a scoreboard up on a wall for some healthy sibling competition.
Indoor winter activities are also all about creativity and originality. Take into consideration what your kids love to do and get your drive from that. You’d be surprised at how easy they are to please.
The cold winter can be both fun and boring depending on the state of the weather. If it is on the harsher side, confinement can be a tough challenge for your hyperactive kids. Indoor winter activities would be the best way for moms to beat the winter blues. If your kids are happy, then that means fewer tantrums which mean you’ll be happy.
So, with that, I wish you a pleasant winter season but in case, get your indoor winter activities on!
Got any indoor winter activities to suggest? Let us know with a comment below!
