I love the holidays, but I am EXHAUSTED! I’m so over traveling, partying and never ending holiday to do lists and ready to get back into a bit of a routine around here. We had lots of snowy fun this week that I can’t wait to share with you! Here were our plans […]

16 awesome ideas to help you throw the ultimate Frozen Party for your Kids.. or you?

Pull of the party of the year with our ideas for the winter wonderland theme. Everything from decorations, food to small details like your table centerpiece.

I love the holidays, but I am EXHAUSTED! I’m so over traveling, partying and never ending holiday to do lists and ready to get back into a bit of a routine around here. We had lots of snowy fun this week that I can’t wait to share with you! Here were our plans […]

These coffee filter snowflakes are such a fun craft to make on a snowy winter day! They're really easy to make, they look gorgeous hanging in the window (or anywhere!) and it's a great opportunity for kids to experiment with colour blending. It's a craft and science experiment mixed together in one - and it ends up looking beautiful! Today was one of those mornings where I woke up in the darkness and made my first cup of coffee - because let's be honest, I'm not doing anything until I have that steaming cup of coffee in my hands. Then

These adorable FREE activities to go along with The Mitten will be emailed to you within minutes! We love using this story throughout the month of January, and even more activities are included in my unit shown below.

We are loving exploring weather science for kids, and this Snow Storm in a Jar has to be one of the coolest we've tried yet!

A snow day is one of the most exciting days in a student's life! Bring a snow day into your classroom with these virtual ideas!

This winter STEM activity is so fun for a group! Grab some toothpicks and marshmallows and design intricate marshmallow snowflakes.

These adorable FREE activities to go along with The Mitten will be emailed to you within minutes! We love using this story throughout the month of January, and even more activities are included in my unit shown below.

How to Make Stress Balls, The best cheap stress balls everyone loves, DIY stress balls, Stress relief, DIY therapy ball, Stress balls kids make, sensory play, Orbeez Balls

How to Make Snow Dough. This easy recipe requires only 2 ingredients and is the softest dough you will make!

We watched Happy Feet over the weekend so naturally Madelynn is a bit in love with penguins lately which made it the perfect time for our penguin tot school theme. We did a few of the same penguin activities that we tried last year, but tried lots of new ones too! Here were our […]

This year theme for my kid’s school Disco was Winter Wonderland and I was extremely happy to help with the decorations. I helped last year as well, but I didn’t get any good picture of …

Indoor winter activity for kids. You don't need real snow for this fun snow themed activity.

Here's a simple activity you'll love! This easy Torn Paper Snowflake craft is perfect for all ages and is super quick to set-up too!

Here is our list of snowball games, these 7 indoor snowball fight, games & activities will get the kids moving and playing indoors (without getting cold)!

I love the holidays, but I am EXHAUSTED! I’m so over traveling, partying and never ending holiday to do lists and ready to get back into a bit of a routine around here. We had lots of snowy fun this week that I can’t wait to share with you! Here were our plans […]

Laura @inspiremyplay Founder of @inspiremyplay, Early Years teacher for 11 years and mummy to three gorgeous girls. I'm passionate about about the benefits of play in early childhood. This post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and go on to make a purchase, I may receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you). Please read my disclosure policy for more details. Are you searching for fun and engaging winter-themed sensory and creative play ideas for your little ones? Look no further! This blog post is filled with easy and interactive activities that are perfect for preschoolers and young children at home or in an early years setting. From exploring winter through touch, sound, and sight, to incorporating winter themes into sensory play, these activities provide opportunities for play-based learning with the aim to support your child’s development. Get ready to have some winter fun with your little ones with these amazing sensory and creative play ideas. Frozen Bubbles This is such a magical experience to do with little ones! If you get a cold morning then it is well worth bracing the weather to blow bubbles and watch them freeze together! This works well when it’s about -2, -3C so as we have cold snap this week why not save this activity to try! Check out our blog post to find out how to do it. Frozen Pom-Poms There really is something magic about freezing things for kids to break free again! Add droppers, warm water, containers & scoops. This is great for fine motor skills and also provides opportunities for colour sorting, maths, exploring freezing and melting and lots more! Please supervise carefully. Pom-poms are a potential choking hazard to small children. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Inspire My Play ® (@inspiremyplay) Snowflake Bubble Foam Bubble foam is always an easy win for us! On this occasion we added some snowflake cookie cutters and my little one loved exploring making and popping the bubbles! To make bubble foam simply mix roughly half a cup of bubble bath and 1 cup of water together in a blender or using a hand mixer. Spoon out the foam into a tray. If there’s any watery liquid left in the bottom give that a whisk too. I also some added scoops and bowls and sequin snowflakes that she enjoyed searching for in the foam! Once the foam disappears you can easily re-whisk it back into a foam. In fact, we actually left this in the tray for a few days then re-whisked it to use today and it was just as good as before! Winter Chickpea Sensory Bin It’s no secret that dried chickpeas are one of our favourite sensory play materials! They are so satisfying to scoop and pour (for grown-ups too!) and are a bit easier to contain than rice and other grains. They also last forever to re-use over and over. You don’t have to colour them, but it makes a fun change and it’s so easy to do! To colour dried chickpeas all you need is a bag or jar, a squirt of ready-mix tempera paint and a lined tray to lay them on to dry. You can find our step by step guide here. The chickpeas dry super quick, but if you’re in a hurry you can put them in the oven on a low heat to dry out for 5 minutes. These winter style ones will be perfect for all our seasonal play. Throw in some bowls and scoops and a poppet is great fun to fill with chickpeas too! You can buy our nesting bowl set here. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Inspire My Play ® (@inspiremyplay) Arctic Small World Thanks to @minimundos_demimundo on Instagram for sharing this polar inspired small world in the PlayTRAY. There’s so much to explore with this one! Save this list of bases to try sometime : Water with blue food colouring Salt Dyed blue salt, Shaving foam, Oobleck (water & cornflour) Baking soda+water (add vinegar for a fizzy reaction!) Ice Art Freezing some water in a shallow tray makes a great canvas for some process art. You can paint on the ice with regular paint, paint sticks, watercolours or dilute some food colouring and drip the colour on using droppers. Each will achieve a slightly different effect. This is a brilliant one for encouraging kids to explore and experiment and a great opportunity for some colour mixing theory too. Iceberg Sensory Bin I realise this small world isn’t geographically accurate but when your 2 year-old insists we need polar bears what can you do? I wanted to share this particular set-up to show tray play doesn’t always have to be messy! My girls had just as much fun making up little stories with this set up. To make the sea we used a batch of dyed dry pasta I used food colouring for this batch but you can find more info and alternative options on a blog post I wrote here. The iceberg is a bit of packaging painted white and I used a bit of felt for the snow. The mountains are triangles of plywood with the tops painted with acrylic paint. Ice Castles Fill containers of different shapes and sizes with water and leave outside on a cold night to freeze. Use the ice like building blocks to create a castle, using shaving foam as cement! To decorate the castles we used droppers to squeeze coloured water over it and also used paintbrushes to paint the ice. This is a messy activity but incredibly fun! If you can, wrap up warm and do it outside. Also, having a bowl of water to clean hands is also handy. Shaving Foam Arctic Small World Whenever the freezer needs clearing of frost I can’t help but want to set up a small world with it! A quick squirt of shaving foam in the bottom of our playTRAY with a tiny bit of blue food colouring swirled in made the sea and then the frost/ice was laid on top. It inevitably gets a bit messy, but actually shaving foam is pretty easy to clean up. A bowl of water nearby to wash hands is useful and children often enjoy the opportunity to do some washing up! The mountains are a quick DIY using plywood and acrylic paint. The majority of our animal figures are from Schleich, which I highly recommend. Shop Schleich Animals (Amazon US) Shop Schleich Animals (Amazon UK) Cotton-Wool Snow For a low mess, easy option for pretend snow try cotton-wool balls! These are really fun to set up with construction vehicles. My littlest loved loading them up and moving them around the tray and clearing the road of snow. Card Puzzles Don’t throw your Christmas cards away just yet! Why not recycle them into some DIY puzzles? Make these as simple or challenging as you like to suit your own child. Or increase the challenge gradually by cutting the pieces in half each time they complete it. Obviously this isn’t just limited to Christmas cards but is a great way of reusing them! The benefits of puzzles are numerous... problem solving, reasoning about shapes, fine motor skills and concentration to make a few. And best of all this activity takes minutes to set up and is totally free. Winter Farm My kids love a small world farm and so I thought I’d make them a wintery version in the PlayTRAY! I also wanted to show you a few quick ways to make fake snow but you could just choose one and use it for the entire tray. Icing sugar and desiccated coconut are super easy ways to make pretend snow. Mixing equal parts shaving foam and baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) is another way we love. You can also switch the shaving foam for white hair conditioner and that works well too (and smells lovely!). We made our frozen elements by sticking the PlayTRAY segments in the freezer. The frozen mud can be made using chocolate pudding mix or by mixing 1 cup of flour, 1/4 cup of cocoa and and 1 cup of water, before putting into the freezer for a few hours. This slowly thawed throughout the day to make a fun, messy place to play! Shop Schleich Farm Animals (Amazon US) Shop Schleich Farm Animals (Amazon UK) Ice Skating Penguins To make skating penguins, fill a muffin tray with water and cover with tinfoil. Snap some craft sticks in half and carefully push them through the tinfoil so they are standing upright in the water. Place in the freezer overnight. In the meantime print and cut out the penguins. If you have a laminator, laminating them will give them better protection from the water. Once the water is frozen, remove the tinfoil and tape the penguins to the sticks. Remove them for the muffin tin and you are ready to play! They will glide easily over the glossy surface of the PlayTRAY lid These dancing penguins are available to download for free on our printables page here. An alternative method would be to freeze animal figures directly in the ice. Winter Woodland Play Dough One of mine & the girls favourite play dough invitations! I made this white play dough using our usual recipe and a generous amount of white icing colouring. Alongside the play dough, I put out some natural loose parts and some little trees. As well as making small worlds this is a lovely one for exploring patterns with the loose parts and making tracks in the play dough with the animals (swipe through to see pics) If you would like more info on our top small world resources check out our blog post about it. Making play dough is one of the activities in our FREE Beginners’ Guide to Sensory Play. You can download it by clicking the button below: Get your FREE ebook For more simple DIY recipes & ideas for sensory play at home download your Beginner's Guide to Sensory Play by subscribing to Inspire My Play today. Get Yours Now DIY Snow We have tried a lot of different ways of making artificial snow and this is by far our favourite! It’s so simple to make combining roughly equal amounts of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and shaving foam. It has a great texture and is cool to touch initially, just like snow! If your snow loses it’s ability to form snowballs over time you can revive it by adding a squirt more shaving foam. To fill the PlayTRAY base I used 4 cups of bicarbonate of soda and roughly 4 cups of shaving foam. In the U.K. it is pretty hard to get large bags of bicarbonate of soda in the supermarket but you can pick up KG bags of the stuff cheaply on Amazon (it’s also great for fizzy experiments so worth having a stash in the cupboard). Northern Lights A little twist on the classic nebula jar, we made some Northern Lights jars and it was so much fun! To make the forest scene I cut a piece of adhesive vinyl. If you don’t have vinyl, some black paper will do or you could even paint a forest on the jar using an acrylic paint pen. What you need: • A jar or bottle • Water • Ready mix paint • Cotton wool balls • Bio-glitter • Black paper or vinyl Method 1. Fill your jar about a quarter to a third full of water. 2. Add a generous squirt of paint and some bio glitter and mix. 3. Pull apart or unroll cotton wool balls and place them in the jar. 4. Use a paint brush or similar to press them down into the paint mixture. Keep adding more cotton wool until most of the paint has been absorbed. 5. Now add more water, choose a contrasting colour paint and repeat the process. Continue until you reach the top of the jar before replacing the lid. 6. Cut out a forest silhouette from black vinyl or paper and stick around the bottom of your jar. And that’s it! All mine were able to do this (just help with the forest scene) and each one was unique 🥰. They really are mesmerising to look at! Snow Subtraction Cloud Pom Pom Push I made this one as a visual way to explore subtraction with one of my little ones. The idea was to lay out the pom-poms on the holes and then push through the amount she was subtracting before counting how many were left. I made the cloud into a mini whiteboard with a piece of contact paper/ sticky back plastic over the top and then she was able to record her answer using a chalk pen before wiping it off. For those not ready for subtraction this is still just fun to use as a pom-pom push-it’s a great activity for strengthening little fingers (and they certainly needed it at first with some of these holes!). You could also use this for counting backwards or 1:1 correspondence-say the next number each time you push one through the hole. Winter Light Panel Play Do you own a light panel? This has been a fantastic addition to our play room For this activity I set out a collection of translucent loose parts to make snowflakes. Winter Sensory Bag This winter sensory bag is great for practising a bit of letter formation. Using a sensory approach like this should help children internalise how to form the letter more quickly as well as being more fun and appealing than pen and paper! To make the sensory bag I used hair straighteners to seal three sides of a laminating pouch, added some hair gel, food colouring and some snowflake sequins. I then sealed the final side of the laminating pouch. If you don’t have a laminating pouch or hair straighteners you can easily use a ziplock bag instead. We used ours on a light panel which worked really well but any surface with a contrasting colour would do. Frozen Penguin Eggs Children love to rescue anything frozen! One of the great positives about this activity as it takes the children a long time to do! Here's how to prepare them: 1. Blow up some balloons and let the air out again to stretch them. 2. Place your penguins inside the balloons. This can be a bit tricky but with a bit of patience you can actually get quite large animals inside. 3. Place the balloon over a tap and fill with water. 4. Tie the balloon up and place it in the freezer. Once they are frozen snip off the top of your balloon and it should be easy to peel off. I made a bit of oobleck to put in the bottom of our tray (2 cups of cornflour, 2 cups of water and a drop of food colouring). It’s not necessary but added another sensory element to it and the girls enjoyed playing with the penguins in it afterwards. I gave them spray bottles full with warm water and a little toy hammer to prize open their eggs. The beauty of this is definitely how long it takes- we got a good hours play out of this 😁 Fork Painted Polar Bears Painting with something other than a paintbrush is good fun and fork printing makes great-looking fur! We first made these last year and the girls loved it so much! Feed the Penguin Phonics This DIY game is perfect for practicing letter sounds and words! In this game, I hid the fish with letter sounds written on in a tray of cloud dough- it could easily be rice or anything else- this is just what I already had available to use. This idea was to search through the cloud dough to find the correct sound and then feed it to the penguin. You could easily switch this for words or for little ones posting poms-poms is also lots of fun! To catch the letters as they were fed to the penguin I attached a cardboard box to the back. I also made a hole for his tummy so they could see the contents! This penguin cut out and the fish are available to download here. Bead & Button Snowflakes This is such a calming & mindful process, plus the results are so beautiful! These look lovely hung up on a tree or in a window. All you need are some pipe cleaners to form the snowflake shape and a selection of buttons or beads to thread on. It’s such a great work out for little hands! 🖐 Frozen Play Dough and Wooden People I painted these little Elsa & Anna pegs for the girls to use in their play. I’m definitely not a peg painting expert but it wasn’t that hard to get something resembling the characters by using the right colours! And I think these would make a gorgeous DIY gift. You can check out the blog post here for the full details. Penguin Rescue Place little penguins (or other objects) into a tray or cake tin with water and a bit of food colouring and pop them into the freezer. Once frozen use warm water and a dropper, a spray bottle (because this is always a hit!) to help melt the ice. You can also use a spoon for chipping away at the ice and some tweezers for removing the penguins. I’ve found over the years that this type of activity is usually a winner. It can always be re-frozen and taken out again. Secret Ice Painting Have you tried this before? A little bit of table salt brushed around a cookie cutter or stencil creates a hidden picture on ice, ready to be discovered! We used watered down ready mix paint to reveal the hearts in the ice. You could switch this up for all sorts of themes! You need to be ready to do this activity straight away after prepping before the salt dissolves the ice too much. Either pop a tray of water in the freezer or leave it outside on a cold night to freeze over. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Inspire My Play ® (@inspiremyplay) Arctic Small World Backdrop Try an arctic backdrop for enhancing your small world set ups. We made this particular scene using a cardboard box. To make the icebergs, cut out circles of cardboard that get increasingly smaller. Glue them together and invite the kids to paint them white. You can download our arctic backdrop printable here.

Books “Bears in the Snow” by Shirley Parenteau “Sneezy the Snowman” by Maureen Wright Five Little Snowmen Five little snowmen standing in a row (hold up 5 fingers) Each wit…

Snow is coming, but it might not be ideal for outside play. No worries, make these fun DIY indoor snowballs instead. Perfect winter craft for kids.

Fun winter activities for kids that include: winter books, free printables, snowy treats, and winter art projects.

I'm gonna get personal here! The images from this post were not for a client, but from my daughter's 8th grade dance. I co-chaired the 8th Grade Activities Committee with the most awesome Lori Nissalke. The dance which was Saturday night has been in the planning stages since the end of the last school year! Well planning as in brainstorming and Lori N's wonderful ICE idea! From there on out, things kept coming together till we ended up with what you see below. I debated throwing out thank you's for fear of forgetting someone - because you can't pull this off without a lot of support on ALL levels. I felt like I couldn't go without mentioning a couple of the parents that were so big in making this happen. If I forget to mention you, I am truly sorry and promise to thank you in my next post! See, it's almost better because you will be featured! I've already mentioned Lori Nissalke, the best co-chair a co-chair could have - bargain shopper extraordinaire, wonderfully creative and quite the visionary. Without the creative talents of Rose Antonini (A & E Events), Dr. Deb Berkew, Cindy Nott and Karen Cuervo we could not have done what we did. The look on the kids' faces when they came in made it worth every single minute spent on this event. I am having a hard time not going on and listing everyone that helped out big and small, but I'd be here all day and not get to the pictures. Please know from the bottom of my heart that I appreciate all the hard work and generosity from EVERYONE that did ANYTHING and EVERYTHING! And now...the pictures! For a look at even more shots - check out my Lori Anne Photography Facebook Page. Yes! This is a middle school cafeteria! You can't leave out the bathrooms! One of NINE ice sculptures! Rose with A&E Events created these beautiful chandeliers for the eating area. We gave Mark Mazur some smaller pieces and one large 4x8 piece of plexiglass that very generously donated and asked him to create a piece to hang behind the DJ table. He came back with an amazing three dimensional masterpiece! The Mazurs were also incredibly generous in their donation of the lighting for the event! The Ice Bar - Another Rose creation! One of two pit style seating areas Each of the six high top tables had an ice sculpture - How can you have an ICE theme without ice sculptures! In our early brainstorming sessions, I said it would be fun to have a giant "frozen blocks of ice" with what appeared to be a student in a Martinez uniform shirt frozen inside. Rose took that and created our giant ice cube photo op! Thank you to Dr. Deb's husband who beautifully executed Rose's plans! Lori N found these awesome icicle lights around Christmas time that have chasing blue LED lights and though - This will make a GREAT chandelier! And it DID! And the one project closest to my heart - Our Ice Cave entrance. I thought it would be so cool (pardon the pun) to have the kids come into their ICE themed dance through an ice cave opening. I really didn't know if it would be doable, but my husband Eric and another dad Jeff Salt, talked and came up with an idea - that pretty much mirrored the idea that Rose sketched out as well for how to construct it. Eric and Jeff spent three and a half days assembling this mind blowing feature! One thing I learned, white tarps do NOT glow in black light. It all worked out well in the end with some beautifully applied black light paint.

Have fun over the festive season with these amazing DIY Christmas party games for the little ones.

Snow ball fights, candy canes, and reindeer…time for some winter STEM activities for kids! Read on for 30 science experiments, math activities, engineering design challenges, and even coding fun - all with a winter theme! All these activities use simple materials and are perfect for the classroom or

Your kids will love making these simple snowman snowball shooters and launching marshmallows and cotton balls across the room!

Well, we did it! We finished our first week of Tot School and it was full of fun, surprises, and a few Pinterest fails 😉 I am thrilled to be sharing my very first week of Tot School with you today, and can’t wait to keep the fun going. So in case you missed my […]

These Winter Decorations for After Christmas won't leave your house looking so bare after the holiday decor is packed away for another year!

Enjoy learning about Snow, and the Snow Cycle with this awesome Snow Study that includes worksheets and a flip book about different types of snowflakes.

Find out how to make snow paint with our super easy puffy snow paint recipe. Whether you have snow outside or not, enjoy a fun snow painting winter craft.

Preschoolers learn about winter ice lessons through STEAM Stations, art, books, fingerplays and science experiments. Icicles and ice fun! #MGTblogger

Learn how to make pretend snow with only 2 simple ingredients. The perfect winter sensory play idea.

Easy ice painting bin for preschoolers to explore colors on ice during a winter, snow, or arctic animal theme in the classroom or home preschool!

Snow dough is a fun sensory material to add to small world play and also makes a great play material all on its own. This playdough recipe is perfect for ‘snowy’ play due to its bright white color and somewhat crumbly texture. Follow our Winter Crafts and Learning for Kids Pinterest board! I’m excited …

Paper Icicles for Frozen Ceiling Decoration: Inspired by this art installation and the movie Frozen, I created this ceiling decoration for the holiday season. The whole thing took 2-3 hours to create, so it's thankfully quick in addition to being inexpensive and beautiful. It's also a lot saf…

I love the holidays, but I am EXHAUSTED! I’m so over traveling, partying and never ending holiday to do lists and ready to get back into a bit of a routine around here. We had lots of snowy fun this week that I can’t wait to share with you! Here were our plans […]

We love concocting our own play recipes here on Growing a Jeweled Rose.