Enriching Winter Fun for Kids
With each season comes a whole new variety of activities that can help kids work on essential skills for development. Even though the cold of winter might make us grown-ups want to stay cooped up inside, kids know that this season offers some of the most stimulating opportunities for play.
We have put together a list of the best activities for your child to partake in this Winter that will be both fun and beneficial for their development. These activities can help kids work on their fine and gross motor skills, sensory exploration, and vocabulary development.
Build a Snowman
With all of the snow we have been getting in the Pittsburgh area recently, there has been plenty of opportunity to get out in the snow and play. A great activity to do in this weather is build a snowman! The benefits of this beloved winter tradition go far beyond just being a good time.
Gross Motor Benefits: Pushing balls of snow around your yard, while bending and lifting to shape the perfect snowman is an amazing gross motor workout. The whole body is engaged and working throughout.
Sensory Benefits: Any activity in the snow is a wonderful sensory activity. The different textures of the snow, whether plush or icy, watching as the snow melts on your gloves, or feeling the flakes as they land on your nose are all unique experiences that can help our kids explore their senses.
Speech and Language Development: Snowman building provides plenty of opportunity to work on vocabulary. We can work on action words like “push!,” descriptive words like tall or short, or, if building a snowman family, we can practice pronouns and relationship words like “she is the mommy snowman” or “he is a baby snowman.” This kind of play is great for imagination as well!
Make Paper Snowflakes
Another traditional winter activity that continues to be great for kids’ development is making paper snowflakes. We are all familiar with the folding and cutting actions that turn regular old printer paper into unique and beautiful snowflake creations, but are you aware of all the ways this activity can help your child learn?
Fine Motor Benefits: The actions of folding and cutting are essential fine motor skills. This activity encourages kids to explore how making cuts in folded paper will create a repeating pattern once opened back up. The more they cut, the more unique their design will be! They can also work on their pincer grasp when cleaning up all of the off cuts.
Speech and Language Development: This activity offers opportunity to explore practice action words like “open!” when unfolding your creation or working on phrases like “all done!” when it’s time to clean up.
Go Sledding
As adults, it’s easy to see how much work goes into sledding. But for a kid, it’s just plain fun. This makes it a great way to get kids moving their whole bodies and experiencing a fun outdoor activity with friends.
Gross Motor Benefits: Trudging through the snow up to the top of a good sledding hill is a great full body workout. Bundled up in their snow gear, kids are working much harder than they realize each time the make the journey up to the summit!
Sensory Benefits: Like snowman making, sledding in the snow offers great sensory input through interaction with the snow.
Speech and Language Development: Sledding is a great opportunity to practice phrases like “ready, set, go!” Words like “fast,” “slow,” and “stop!” are likely to come up as well. It is also a great chance to practice directional words like “up” or “down” as you make your way to the top and watch other sleds sliding down the hill!
Make soup
There’s nothing better than a warm pot of homemade soup on a cold winter night! And it doubles as a great activity for kids.
Fine Motor Benefits: Working on chopping vegetables with an adult’s supervision is a great skill to develop hand strength. Plus, other motions involved like pouring and stirring are great skills to practice and will help your child feel included in the preparation of the meal.
Speech and Language Development: Any type of soup will have a variety of ingredients which kids can practice naming or counting; you can also work on descriptive words like “hot!,” action words like “chop!,” and exclamations like “yum!” For an added bonus, you can add alphabet noodles to your soup if you want to practice specific sounds with your child!
Instant Snow
If you want your child to engage in enriching sensory play, without having to bundle them up in their snow gear, instant snow is a great alternative. This squishy substance gives kids a similar sensation to the real stuff without requiring them to brave the cold. Instant snow can be bought in stores or made at home, either way it will offer your child a great new experience to enjoy in the winter months and beyond.
Sensory Benefits: The unique texture of instant snow mimics that of real freshly fallen snow! And while far less drastic than real snow, the fake stuff also offers a cool sensation on the skin when you sink your hands in.
Imaginative Play: A great way to use fake snow is by setting up a bin with accessories like little figures of people or animals and allowing your child to play imaginatively!
They can use it as a setting for their dolls to have a snow day or create their own winter wonderland, the more open ended the play is the better!
Catch Snowflakes
Taking a sheet of frozen black construction paper out in the snow to catch snowflakes is another well-loved winter activity. This can not only teach kids about the structure and beauty of snowflakes but provide developmental benefits as well!
Coordination Benefits: Unless you’re in a blizzard, hand eye coordination is key to catching snowflakes! Your child will watch a flake as it falls and move their body and paper to line up with its flight path. This is a great way to work on coordination and visual motor skills.
Speech and Language Development: Kids can watch cause and effect during this activity, as the snow sits on the paper and gets warmer it will begin to melt, you can then practice phrases like “bye-bye snow!” or “all gone snow!” Other opportunities for language development during this activity include practicing counting snowflakes that you collect or specific sounds.
Go on a Winter Nature Walk
Each season brings with it a whole new world to explore! In the winter months a walk outside can offer lots to see, like the footprints of wild animals, frozen ponds, and birds preparing their nests for the spring.
Gross Motor Benefits: Walking in nature is great for the whole body! The varying terrain can help us work on balance and coordination.
Speech and Language Development: Spotting different animals or natural phenomena is a great way to work on language in the real world. You can also help your child work on imagination by creating a story about the things you see on your walk.
Fine Motor Benefits: A great way to get fine motor skills involved in an activity like this is by collecting items as you walk or creating a checklist for your child to fill out as they see different things.
Even though it has gotten colder, and we may feel less motivated to get out and play. There are still so many activities that can help your child grow and learn in these winter months. If you try any of these activities, let us know by sharing on Facebook or Instagram and tagging @reachforspeechtherapy! We always love to see our patients engaging in fun and enriching activities both in and out of therapy!