Need some simple ideas to keep your kids entertained and make outdoor play more fun? Here are five simple fun outdoor winter activities. They are easy and use simple materials to keep the cold exciting.
1. Icy Shapes
We LOVED this activity and it’s so open ended. You can use milk cartons to make blocks, if you freeze enough you can build a fort! Dig through your recycling and find all kinds of interesting containers, just add food colouring to the water. My genius find for this year was bags from our frozen fruit. They make such a neat shape and we use a lot of frozen fruit! Also balloons make beautiful ice balls. We made sun catchers, very simple and beautiful. You fill a cake pan and use a cup, filled with rocks so it won’t float up, to create a hole for hanging. Then add whatever you’d like. Some suggestions:
- fruit
- bits of pine branches
- pine cones, sticks or other nature bits
- gems
- sprinkles
- little toys
- bird seed
- flower petals
- food colouring
- ice cubes frozen with food colouring
2. Snow Paint
This is such a simple one with endless fun attached. You can use either squeeze bottles or spray bottles or a mix of both.
Just add food colouring to your container and fill with water and you’re good to go! You can likely find slightly cheaper options at Walmart or Canadian Tire but if you’d like to order online, I’ve found some choices below.
Here are bottle options in the perfect size for kid hands:
- Mister 6 pack: I like the size of these and think they will be easy for kids hands. Full size spray bottles can be tricky for kids under 6 or 7, size wise and from a motor perspective. They come in a set of 6, so you can make a palette of colours!
- Small spray bottle 4 pack: Again, perfect size and these are in 4 different cute colours.
- 7 Pack squeeze bottles: Simple with little red caps that will hopefully be easier to find in the snow
- 6 Pack squeeze bottles: I liked that these were a bit shorter and wider than the classic style above.
3. Snow Volcano
This is so easy and big excitement! Find a smaller sized container, which will allow more ‘lava’ to flow out, put some baking soda and food colouring in it and build a snow volcano around it. Then pour in some vinegar and watch it erupt! Some add dish soap to create a foamier lava, up to you.
4. Bring Toys Outside
It’s always exciting to bring something that kids generally think of as an ‘inside’ toy, outside. My daughter sometimes fills her backpack with her buddies and it makes going for a walk more exciting. We also bring kitchen utensils, bowls or containers out to play for some novelty or duplo or animal figurines. Here are a few other great ideas!
5. Make Maple Taffy
This is such a Canadian thing. I loved this treat when I was a kid and we would visit a local conservation area in March and get make it. How fun to make it in your own backyard. The materials are simple but the majority of recipes do call for a candy thermometer. I think you could swing it without, you’d just need to really pay attention to the consistency of the syrup. And of course, you need to use real maple syrup. Here are a few different recipes, choose your favourite.
- Martha Stewart’s recipe
- The Kitchn (my fav simple recipe/cooking blog)
- Wholefully adds butter, yum! Bit more like a caramel
I hope these simple fun outdoor winter activities help inspire you. I love fun for kids that use few materials, is open ended and is easy to put together. As a teacher, I really see that these are the things that keep kids engaged the most. My more complex ideas generally flop. Simple wins.
