There are several ways your family can have fun this winter while staying home during the pandemic. Here are our favourite activities for you to enjoy this winter.

Indoor fun:

Bring the Outside In: Sensory Play
Winter can be an excellent opportunity for sensory activities. Snow and ice can help children explore the world around them using all of their senses. Playing in the snow or with ice is a great sensory activity that can promote exploration and discovery by incorporating various learning opportunities.

• Using all Five Senses: Watching snow fall, feeling of snow/ice, taste of snow ice, sounds that it makes
• Textures: Is the snow/ice fluffy or hard?
• Language Skills: Learn words such as melt, squish, crunch, damp, cold
• Concepts: Melting or freezing ice and water
• Creative Problem Solving:  How to build structures, how much to fill a bucket
• Emotional: Sensory bins with snow can be a great calming activity if your child is stuck inside with energy to burn!
• Fine Motor Skills: Strengthening coordination of hands and fingers, and how they work together with their eyes (think of how much coordination it takes to use a spray bottle)

Fun Activities:

Snow
Using a large storage bin or the bathtub, bring the snow indoors. You can also use food colouring to make it even more interesting; try filling spray bottles with colour and water or use a paint brush to paint the snow. Bury different toys in the snow and have your child do a scavenger hunt.

If snow is too cold for your little one, try this instant snow recipe:
-    Pour 1.5 cups of baking soda into a backing tray
-    Pour ¼ cup shampoo into the same tray
-    Use your hands to mix together for fluffy snow
-    Build a tiny snowman or an artic habitat!

Visit our Sensory Board on Pinterest for more indoor winter sensory fun.

Ice
Fill balloons or different sized containers with coloured water and freeze them (either outside or in your freezer). Once they’re frozen, pull off the balloon or container to create a big beautiful marble that kids can play with in a bin, sink, bathtub or a city with different sized structures!



Check out this YouTube video for instructions.

Indoor Activities:

Being cooped up inside gives plenty of opportunities to practice gross and fine motor skills, weight bearing, sensory play and problem solving.

Build a Cool Fort
Let their imaginations run wild and use pillows, cushions and blankets around a couch or table to create a perfect hideaway for their afternoon snack or quiet time. Creating tunnels that your child can crawl through can help them practice weight-bearing exercises and gross motor activity. Check out these great fort ideas!

Homemade Building Blocks
Take old cereal boxes, shoe boxes or any other empty box and wrap them with construction paper. Help your child draw windows or doors on the boxes (or whatever their imagination comes up with) and use them to build a mini city!

Arts and Crafts
Cold, snowy days are the perfect inspiration to encourage your child’s artistic side.

Bring the snow inside by making paper snowflakes and hang them from windows or ceilings for a winter wonderland. Snowflakes can be personalized and your child can tell you how big or small to they would like them or if capable, cut the holes the appropriate size.

Make Play-Doh snowmen. Add some glitter to the Play-Doh for that snowy sparkle and extra sensory stimuli!

We hope you enjoy some of these family friendly activities this winter!
 

2020-12-10