Category: Preschool

As your homeschool finds its New Year’s groove again, one way to smooth away some of the rough patches is to build in some Snow Day fun on those cozy afternoons. By sprinkling “specials” often reserved for breaks and holidays into your everyday school routine, you can keep the joy of homeschooling alive and dust away those winter blues. From one homeschooling mama to another, here is part one in a series of favorite “fun-tivities” for winter, with this week’s focus on outdoor/indoor snow ideas!

• Snowtubs! This has been one of my children’s absolute favorite snow-day activities literally since they were born. Simply take a shallow, plastic, under-bed storage container and fill with snow and bring inside. Infants and toddlers explore, touching and tasting snow, while preschoolers enjoy building an indoor snowman, scooping and dumping snow with measuring cups, or creating an imaginative wonderland in the tub with toys. (This is also a wonderful sensory activity for parents to occupy younger children while helping olders with their schoolwork!)

No snow in your area? No problem! Add science into the mix, filling a tub with Insta-Snow (found online https://www.amazon.com/Be-Amazing-Insta-Snow-Makes-Gallons/dp/B000FA6APE or make your own with Pinterest recipes!)

• Spray paint snow—When it’s not too cold to venture out on a winter afternoon, add an empty spray bottle filled with water and some liquid watercolor paint or food coloring. Put different colors in each bottle and designate a snowy area of your yard to become your child’s outdoor canvas. Older children may enjoy leading younger siblings on an animal tracking adventure in the snow with the spray bottles. Explore around your yard, or a local park to spot different animal tracks, allowing younger children to squirt each discovery with the watercolor spray! For further fun, take pictures on your phone of the animal prints and enjoy looking them up together after the hike!

• Sledding—Snowy days also often provide the best incentive for children to work quickly and well in order to be able to head over to the sledding hill when work is complete. There is nothing my children enjoy more than when mom and dad join in the fun, and if this is a possibility for you—do it! I highly encourage all parents to jump on a sled with your children at least once this season, or if your children are old enough, perhaps try something new together like snowshoeing or skiing.

• Snow forts are another timeless favorite, and a great way to have your children work together planning, designing, and building together, (with some strength training P.E. in there with all that shoveling to boot!)

• And if snow is not an option on your cozy afternoon, a table, some chairs and a pile of blankets are all it takes to make some really cool blanket forts. Just add books, some stuffed friends, and perhaps some homemade hot chocolate.

• Snowcakes—Another indoor special for when the temperatures are too cold to play outside for long—snowcake-decorating sessions. Fill pie and cake pans with snow to bring indoors, set out watercolor paints and brushes over towels on the kitchen floor and let imaginations run wild! My own children would invite friends over and work diligently for hours designing their chilly creations.
• If a blustery day isn’t forecasting snow, REAL cakes made by free-range chefs are always a cozy-day “special” as well! Grant your children permission to just experiment in the kitchen baking their own cake creations! Adults set limits of the ingredients allowed and man the oven, but other than that, let your children have the time of their lives cracking eggs, pouring milk, whisking flour everywhere, adding food coloring for fun. This is also a great opportunity to get rid of any unwanted Christmas candy! –Let them bake it ALL into their cakes! (Definitely about the process not the product!) …and for all you Type A’s out there—2 words: Plastic. Tarp.

Try a few of these ideas several times a week, and hopefully as the temperatures drop, your homeschool’s attitude will begin to soar!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series with a focus on favorite winter reads!

When the temperatures are too cold to be outside for long afternoon breaks, games are a perfect way to bring families together, while also reinforcing skills needed for learning. Here are this homeschooling mama’s top picks for beating winter blues through fun and games! 

Littles

• Cranium Hulabaloo teaches shape and color recognition while letting children get their wiggles out at the same time! Mats of different shapes and colors are scattered across the floor, and an electronic device shouts out different ways for children to get to the nearest designated mat. Lots of fun for all, and helps young children learn to follow directions as well.
• Chutes and Ladders, while a childhood staple and classic, still is brand new fun for your preschoolers and provides counting practice and number recognition. Fun ways to put a new twist on this game—let your children use their favorite small toy figurines in place of game pieces. In our house we have also played an Opposite Day version, where a player gets to walk up the slides and climbs down the ladders, or we start at the finish and subtract our way to the start!

• Memory builds visual memory skills critical for recognizing letters and numbers, as well as sight words in reading. A fun way to help little ones feel connected to out-of-state extended family is to make up your own Memory game with family photos! Simply print off doubles of favorite pictures of grandmas, grandpas, cousins and more; glue to colored cardstock squares, and then play! (You may want to laminate.)

Elementary-Aged

• Qwirkle is a great strategy game to bust out that the youngest in your family will be able to enjoy alongside older siblings and parents. Children build on math skills by looking for ways to build patterns, matching colors or shapes, and adding up points as they do so. Planning, patterns and problem-solving skills make this the perfect game to pull out when a math lesson ends in tears.
• Scrabble Alphabet Soup incorporates all the senses into spelling fun. Children love taking turns shaking up all the letter tiles in the pot, scooping them out in a hurry to see who can match all the letters to their word first. This game is great for letter recognition, phonemic awareness and strengthens early literacy skills through hands-on fun!

Want more spelling challenge for older elementary? Try the Campbell’s Alphabet Dice Game, where players simply throw the dice and spell words.

• Guesstures (a modern take on Charades) is another family favorite that bridges all age-gaps. Perfect for snowy days or family game nights, this game builds on children’s creative thinking skills, gets them up and moving, and emphasizes drama/theater skills!

Middle School and Beyond

• Dixit provides a fun-tastic break from everyday language arts, building storytelling skills and creativity with friends and family. While one player is chosen as the storyteller creating a sentence from an image on one of his six cards, the rest of the players have fun choosing a card from theirs which best matches the sentence.
• Picwits is a similar game, building on creative connections and associations. All players have to choose one of their picture cards to best represent the judge’s caption card. *Warning some of the photos on a few of the cards could be a little frightening for younger players. Still, loads of laughs to brighten a dreary day!

• Ticket to Ride is a grand adventure for a gloomy day, where players expand their geography knowledge and strategy skills as they plot to claim railway routes, build the longest continuous railroad, and try to complete the mission of their Destination Tickets.

Just for Fun

I just had to mention my family’s two favorite games for middles and beyond when we just want to laugh and have fun. Quelf, is simply a hilarious game of ridiculous rules being played out to avoid penalties. Perfect for an afternoon with friends, or a multi-family game night.

And the top favorite new game in this family of artists is Telestrations. In this cross between Pictionary and Telephone, the less artistic the players are, the more fun and funnier the game becomes!

Enjoy!

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series where we look at favorite winter reads!