10 Must-Try Christmas & Winter-Themed Activities for Children

Seasonal Activity Ideas for Preschoolers

From twinkling lights to cosy crafts, baking adventures to imaginative classroom projects, winter holidays offer endless possibilities for creativity, learning, and bonding.

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at 10 seasonal ideas designed to captivate young minds and foster meaningful connections. Let’s make this winter season not just festive, but truly magical!

These activities are simple, low-budget and easy to set up. Pick a few or see how many you and your little one(s) can tick off!

Winter Nature Scavenger Hunt  

A scavenger hunt is a great educational activity and a fun reason to get outdoors for an hour or two.  

Simply write a list of items that the children are going to hunt for. They can help you think of ideas and older children can even write their own lists.  

In colder climates, it can often seem like there is not much to see. Kids can get really excited when they see how many critters are still hiding under logs or keeping warm in trees!  

Some ideas for your list:

• Winter plants, such as ivy, holly (bonus points for spotting red berries!) or even mistletoe  

• Flowers – some plants will still be blooming. What colours can they spot? Are there any insects hiding under leaves or in the flowers?

• Animals – Squirrels, rabbits, foxes. Can you see any sign of them, such as tracks or chewed pine cones? Birds – can you spot any empty nests? What colour, shape and size are the birds you spot? Can you compare them? Can you hear any birds singing?

• Insects, such as beetles, woodlice, ants etc. Where are they hiding? They may be under logs, in amongst fallen leaves or in holes in a tree trunk.  

• Earth – how does it feel? Is it hard, cold, wet, muddy?  

• Water – can you spot any puddles, ice or snow? What makes water turn to ice?  

Children may be able to collect samples, such as fallen leaves or twigs. These can be fun to use in other activities, or to make a winter collage.

Seasonal Sensory Bin

A sensory bin is always a big hit in a preschool setting, but it can work well at home too. For minimal mess, we recommend placing a large mat under the container, or placing a smaller container within a tuff tray.  

A deep container works well if you have a lot of loose, messy materials.  

Start with a winter-themed base. This can be wet or dry. If using a wet base, ensure you only add materials you don’t mind getting wet.  

Then add medium-sized and smaller items. Provide tools such as scoops and tweezers for children to use.  

You can set them challenges for items to find, give time for free play, and encourage children to talk about what they can see, feel and hear. Give opportunities for them to identify colours and shapes.  

Base options (to represent snow or another winter-theme): shredded paper, soap bubbles, fake snow, crumpled wrapping paper, pine branches, tinsel, cotton wool balls etc.  

Additional items: Christmas decorations, natural materials such as pine cones or branches, themed soft toys, small wrapped items etc.  

You can also do a smaller, tabletop version with festive sprinkles, biodegradable glitter, small baubles, dried orange slices etc.  

See plenty of winter sensory bin ideas from Dyan at And Next Comes L.

Ice Cube Exploration

Kids find ice fascinating, and for good reason! There’s something so mesmerising about watching it melt and feeling the textures and temperature change.  

A few easy ideas to try:

• Tip ice cubes (in novelty shapes or cubes) into a bowl of water. Children can pick out the cubes with spoons or scoops.  
  

• Prepare ice cubes in a deep dish or bowl. Provide jugs of various sizes with warm water (bonus points for adding some colour with watered-down paint or food colouring!). Children can pour the water into the bowl and watch the ice melt. If you add colour to the water, they can also explore colour mixing too.  

• Add festive waterproof items to a freezer-safe container of water and freeze overnight. Remove, leave for a short time until the ice is safe to touch, and place in a deep tray. Provide child-safe utensils for breaking the ice, and warm water for melting it. Older children can race to see who can free the items the fastest.
  

• Ice painting. An empty juice or milk carton can work well for this – just cut the top off and run the container under warm water until the block of ice inside is loose enough to remove. Place the block in a tray, to catch melted water. Use paint brushes, droppers and watered-down food colouring or paint to paint the ice. The effect on the transparent ice is magical!  

• Antarctic/Polar small world play – Add ice and water to a deep container, with waterproof toy animals such as penguins, polar bears and seals. Older children can talk about what they think the different animals eat, where they live etc.  

Christmas Book Advent Calendar  

This one takes a little preparation but can be done on a budget – especially if you borrow from friends or build up a collection second-hand throughout the year.  

Children love advent calendars and they can be a great way to explore numbers and develop basic numeracy skills.  

A book-themed advent calendar is a fun, sugar free approach to the traditional advent countdown calendar.  

Simply gather 25 Christmas or Winter-themed children’s books. You can stretch the theme if needed, to anything connected to winter – snow, stories involving polar bears or penguins etc.  

Wrap each book separately, numbering them 1 to 25. You can leave this under a Christmas tree, or hide them around the house for an extra bit of fun!  

Each day, at a time that suits, take the correct numbered book for that day. Unwrap it together and enjoy a surprise new story every day.  

This activity is also a great way to encourage reading at school. It can work really well in the classroom, using borrowed or donated books.

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Hot Chocolate Station

What better way to warm up after a cold winter walk than a hot chocolate? Involving children in the process of making themselves a drink can help to develop fine motor skills and the ability to process, retain and follow instructions.  

This activity gives children the opportunity to use tweezers to pick up marshmallows, jugs for pouring liquids, spoons for mixing and measuring cups for other ingredients.  

Your little ones can practice fine motor skills, processing, retaining and following instructions all in one simple yet oh-so festive activity.  

We recommend adding milk (dairy or non-dairy, as required) or cold water to cool liquids so they are warm, rather than hot.  

To set up a hot chocolate station, you will need:

• Hot chocolate powder, or your preferred ratio of sweetener to cocoa powder.  

• Milk of your choice, warmed  

• Marshmallows (optional)

• Whipped Cream (optional)

• Child-safe utensils and containers. Plastic cups/beakers with a lid for younger children.  

Holiday Card Making  

There are so many easy ways to make Christmas cards with toddlers and preschoolers, either at home or in the classroom.

Hand or footprints are great to get very young children involved, and those cute little prints can be quickly turned into reindeers, robins or Christmas trees.  

Writing or tracing their own name is a great opportunity to practice and celebrate early literacy skills.  

We love this Christmas card idea by Hester’s Handmade Home.  

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Pinecone Science

Ever noticed that pinecones can be open or closed? Or that they come in a wide range of shapes and sizes?  

Female pinecones do a very clever thing to help protect and then spread the seeds they hold inside. When it is damp, they close up tightly to protect the seeds. When the atmosphere around them is dry, they open up to release the seeds, as winds are more likely to pick up and transport the seeds when it is a dry day.  

If you have any pine trees growing nearby, take your little ones for a walk to collect as many different kinds as they can find. Alternatively, you can provide your own collection or (in a school setting) ask children to bring one in to share with their class.  

Take your pinecones and talk about whether they are open or closed. Discuss what might be inside.  

Place any open pinecones in water. You can set a timer if you want to use the opportunity to talk about measuring time, too. You may need to wait 20-60 minutes for them to close.  

Mini Santa

This is a fun idea that can turn opening gifts into a literacy and sensory activity too.

All you need is some already wrapped gifts. These can be real gifts that you intend to give out, or you can wrap up some everyday objects and have children try to guess what they are too.

For this activity, you will need to clearly mark the name of the person the gift is intended for on the wrapping or a label. You can write the full name, just the first letter of their name, add a photo of the person or a combination of these. It all depends on what you think will work best for your little ones!  

You can also differentiate this activity by pre-selecting the gifts and providing clues to help them work out who each gift is for.  

Before the gifts are opened, encourage the children to gently feel and shake them. What can they hear/see/feel? Is it heavy or light? Is it hard or soft? What could it be?

DIY Bird Feeders

Winter is a great time to see birds up close in many parts of the world. With branches bare, they are so much easier to spot – and hungry birds will come much closer too.

We love making bird feeders with our little ones at this time of year, and there are countless ways to do this.

This is a great opportunity to get creative with recycled materials, too. Older children will be able to talk with you about why recycling is important, and even come up with their own recycled bird feeder designs.  

What you need for this activity depends on which kind of bird feeder you decide to make. However, a large tub of bird seed is a good place to start!

You can also use lard or other high-fat foods, such as nut butter (allergy-dependent).  

We have used a wide range of materials to build bird feeders, including egg boxes, empty cartons, hollowed-out pumpkins, egg shells, apples, and pine cones.

Here's a great selection of preschool bird feeder activity ideas by Messy Little Monster.

You will also want to have plenty of strong twine to hand, so you can easily hang up your little one’s creations.  

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Christmas Dough Decorations

Play dough can be used for so many fun festive activities. It’s also great for developing fine motor skills and hand strength for writing too.  

We love this Christmas tree decorating activity by Natural Beach Living. You’ll find a recipe to make your own coloured play dough via the same link, but store-bought will work just as well.  

To set up this activity, you will need a Christmas tree biscuit or cookie cutter, decorations (pom poms, sequins etc.) and some green play dough. Although play dough is taste-safe, it should not be eaten. You’ll want to make sure this activity is appropriate for your little one(s) as it could present a choking hazard.  

If you want to make decorations to keep, you can either leave the play dough to harden (this can take up to a few weeks, and you will notice some white salt residue once it has dried) or use a salt dough recipe.  

If using salt dough, the activity is the same. You’ll simply need to prepare the dough in advance. Afterwards, bake it in the oven on a low heat until it the decorations have hardened.  

The trick with salt dough is patience! Using too high a heat will cause your salt dough creations to puff up and/or burn. You can find a simple salt dough recipe here.  

So there you have it! 10 easy and low-budget seasonal activities that work just as well in the classroom as at home.

Let us know if you try any of them. We’d love to hear from you!