Winter Activities for Early Learning
Winter is a mixed bag of holiday magic, meltdowns, and cold or nasty weather that can often keep us indoors.
Anyone who cares for young children knows how important and emotionally grounding outside time, predictable rhythms, and routines can be, which means that the absence of such essentials during a cold and busy season can really make for some tough days filled with big feelings and more emotional dysregulation than usual.
Below is a collection of 13+ of our favorite winter-themed and indoor-friendly activities that have kept my little learners moving, regulating, and learning all winter season long!
Wintery Counting
When there’s snow on the ground outside, keeping kids engaged indoors can be extra challenging. So, if you can’t take them outside to be in the snow, bring the snow to them! This activity setup offers lots of fun with counting, adding, subtracting, composing, & decomposing numbers using our winter tens frame and snowy owl counters. Plus, we added in extra fun by using play dough to build our numbers, and to create extra counting manipulatives! The perfect play for a snowy learning day!
Like these materials?
Check them out in my January Is For Mittens Play To Learn Preschool Pack! Hands-on learning materials that keep your littles learning and having fun!
2. Unwrap Holiday Magic
Wrapped some magna-tiles in tin foil, cut a sliver out of a box, and cha-ching! Easy activity that keeps little hands engaged!
The bonus is that it’s open-ended- as intent as I was on having my toddler unwrap and put them through the box, he wanted to unwrap and build cubes to put his action figures inside of- which is way more involved and creative than my idea was!
Benefits include:
Fine Motor
Hand Eye Coordination
Sensory & Tactile Input
Open-Ended Play
Recycled Materials
3. Our Favorite Day of the Year
This activity goes several layers deep using a cross-curricular setup that touches on racial diversity, cultural diversity, emotions, facial expressions, calendar math, literacy, and more!
Enjoy this beautiful book with your children as you build social emotional skills by relating emotions and facial expressions to different times of the year.
Then, work on calendar math, number recognition, and loads of other early math skills using stickers to match numbers on the calendar, count weeks, mark days, etc. Perfect for ringing in the New Year with little learners!
4. Frozen Bookish Play
I’m continuously on the lookout for sensory bases that do not present choking hazards for 2-year-old toddlers, and yarn works super well!
Cut it into different size pieces, add in some characters, and you’ve got a whole small world scene that’s safe for little learners!
Like these activity ideas?
Check them out in my December Is For Snowflakes Hands-on learning materials that keep your littles learning and having fun!
5. Candy Cane Lane
Infusing cars and trains and trucks into all our activities is keeping engagement high for my younger one, so our simple winter small world play got a level up with some painter’s tape roadways after I kept seeing him drive his cars around the edge of the table!
A simple shift to make in order to ensure that things stay child-centered and child-led!
You can easily adapt this idea to add in your child’s current interests- dinosaurs, favorite characters, letters and numbers, etc.! By observing our children and letting them lead the way as we create and modify setups, we ensure that their learning and engagement is maximized.
6. Winter Train Small World
There is something about winter that makes train play extra special. At the time of this setup, my little one had been into all things that go, so this train track small world was a perfect way to encourage:
Imaginative Play
Fine Motor Development, and
Language Development
…all within a current favorite theme!
7. Oona In The Arctic by Kelly DiPucchio
Oona In The Arctic by Kelly DiPucchio & Raissa Figueroa is such a precious story!
With Black and Indigenous representation that is as powerful as the magic held in each illustration, readers join Oona, a mermaid who is determined to help a lost baby beluga return home, on a journey of friendship, connection, and bravery.
A beautiful story for all readers, but a must-have for mermaid lovers!! A perfect way to bring together the best of summer and winter themes!
8. Wrapping Paper & Bows
Little hands are great at touching decorations (making the holidays a season of more “no, stop, don’t!” than we’d all like), so give them permission to touch safely by creating sensory bins out of all those tempting and often “off-limits” holiday materials!
Some ways to play that children naturally gravitate toward might be:
Ripping wrapping paper
Exploring colors and textures
Engaging in imaginative play
… all adding to a perfect sensory experience that is festive and fun!
9. Magnetic Tile Christmas Tree
If you have a magnetic door (or a fridge works, too!) use some painters tape to create a Christmas tree, menorah, kinara, snowflake, or other winter and holiday symbols, and let the children use magnetic tiles as decorations!
The great part is that not only can this setup be adapted to reflect whatever your family celebrates during winter, but it can also last all season long as they decorate and redecorate in different ways!
10. Snow Angel, Sand Angel by Lois-Ann Yamanaka and Ashley Lukashevsky
Told with larger than life illustrations, this beautiful story helps readers not only appreciate earth’s gifts, other lifestyles, and the places we each call home, but also shows us just how similar vastly different places can be. It is a story of appreciation, re-framing, and heart.
This is a fantastic book for winter time, but could also be used any time and easily be paired with lesson on weather/seasons, climate, same vs. different, or character perspective.
11. Holiday Maze Play
I’m always aMAZEd at how much focus and attention kids give to activities they love. Mazes are a great emotional regulator for my older son, and we love to color on them for weeks afterward to make the most out of the jumbo paper we used. Making them holiday- or winter-themed adds novelty for the season!
Benefits include:
Concentration
Hand-Eye Coordination
Fine Motor Skills
Executive Functioning
Perseverance
Critical Thinking
Emotional Regulation
12. S is For Snow
Here is a super simple sensory setup for little hands! Cotton balls or crinkle paper make great snowy play, and requires about three minutes or less of prep!
We paired this setup with one of our favorite wintery reads and enjoyed all the snowy play!
If you like simple and impactful setups like the ones above, check out all the other winter play-based and low-prep activities and lessons in my TpT Shop!
13. Snowy Shelf Activities
If you know me, you know I LOVE a shelf rotation. Winter shelf rotations always feel so cozy and inviting, and I know the kids will agree!
Lots of festive and wintery fun on this shelf setup, and lots of great resources from @familiusbooks , which are always a special treat! Any time I can pair literacy and learning is a good one!
Activities pictured:
Stocking & Snowflake Fine Motor Trap and Release
“S is for Snow” Play Tray
Rudolph Busy Book
“A Winter Walk in the City” Puzzle Play
“Snooza Palooza” Counting Tray
Want to get started with some high-quality play-based lessons and activities for early learners but not quite sure where to begin? Want to save time while still ensuring that your instruction is expertly planned and culturally responsive? Claim your copy of Intentional & Inclusive: The Ultimate Teacher Toolkit to my favorite inclusive and antiracist activities and see what inspires you are your kids! 
I'm Chiara, owner and operator of Love and Excellence LLC. As the brainchild of a teacher turned stay-at-home mom, Love and Excellence is dedicated to creating and sharing high-quality learning resources for infants, toddlers, and school-aged children.
Every resource is designed with careful consideration of developmentally appropriate practices, culturally responsive pedagogy, and student engagement as the top priorities. With a B.A. in General & Special Education and a M.Ed in Early Childhood Curriculum & Instruction, I bring a wealth of experience using the best inclusive practices to every resource I create.
