DIY Snowy Mason Jars – create faux snow-covered mason jar luminaries for the holiday season. Perfect for decorating your holiday mantle, table or porch!
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.
As the holidays inch closer, I'm sharing a few of my picks for the winter brides and grooms! I'm talking to those engaged couples who are braving the chilly temperatures to get married in winter! Of course, these easy winter wedding ideas are all centered around a stunning velvet wedding garter full of jewel tones that I handmade. Velvet and jewel tones on anything is perfect for winter weddings and I'm so glad that velvet is becoming a wedding trend and more and more couples are incorporating into their big day! From robes to garters to signature cocktails to hot cocoa and winter wedding bells to jewel tones all of these easy winter wedding inspirations are perfect for an elegant December wedding! Or a wedding in January or February! (Or November and March, depending on where you live!) And, better yet, all of these winter wedding ideas are super simple and easy for the couple to do at the last minute if they are getting married sooner rather than later while the weather is still cold! Here is a collection of simple ideas for winter weddings... Winter Wedding Accessories Shop this Velvet Wedding Garter:Vows in Velvet - Velvet and Tulle Wedding Garter I love the vibrant colors in this wedding garter heirloom - the velvet gives it a cozy feel while the deep colors and satin bow keep it elegant and elevated. Cozy and jewel tones are perfect for winter weddings!It's fun to make such a physically small (but meaningful!) item the center of your wedding day attire, and this sophisticated garter is the perfect place to start! If velvet is your thing, but you don't love purple, you might like this other elegant wedding garter that I made that has emerald velvet and gold lace - it is gorgeous! ******* Shop this velvet bride or bridesmaid robe: Emerald Green Velvet Bridal Robe Made by: Ribbon and Rings For those getting married in the winter, I'd pair a velvet garter with an emerald green velvet robe for the bride or her bridesmaids! Hello, cozy on your wedding morning! ******* Shop this velvet bride or bridesmaid robe: Velvet and Lace Kimono Bridesmaid Robe Made by: Ella Winston Your bridesmaids would *love* you if you got them a velvet robe to get ready in for your wedding. Your bridesmaids would wear a velvet robe all year long, not just in the winter and not just on your wedding morning! (Or is that just me, I'd love a velvet robe, hint, hint!)And, the wedding morning pictures! Oh, you and your bridal party would all look so gorgeous in matching velvet robes! A velvet getting-ready robe for the bride and her bridesmaids is the perfect accessory (and gift!) for winter weddings! ******* Shop this Velvet Bridesmaid Accessory:Velvet Hair Bow Bridesmaid AccessoryMade by: Bardot Bow Gallery A velvet hair bow adds the perfect texture for brisk winter weddings. This finishing touch can be a beautiful accessory for your bridesmaids' hairstyles and looks amazing in photography. Not to mention, it's an accessory your bridesmaids will actually be able to use again! ****** Shop this Winter Wedding Accessory:Winter Wedding Hair VineMade by: Savchenko Design ****** Shop this Winter Wedding Accessory:Winter Hair CombMade by: Mavka Floral Studio ****** Shop this Winter Wedding Accessory:Faur Fux Bridal WrapMade by: Lost In Time Inc ****** Shop this Winter Wedding Accessory:Winter Bridal BouquetMade by: Songs From the Garden ****** Shop this custom velvet pouch: Personalized Bridesmaid Velvet Makeup Clutch Made by: Love and Luxe Handmade How cute are these personalized dark navy blue velvet clutches for your bridesmaids?! As I said, velvet is so on trend for winter weddings and in everyday fashion - your bridesmaids will love these velvet clutches!The dark navy blue of these velvet pouches is so chic and elegant - talk about a stylish something blue for the bride - and her 'maids! ****** Shop this custom velvet ring box: Personalized Initial Velvet Ring Box Made by: Camellia and Love Perfect for those wedding day details captured by your photographer and as a safe spot for your ring at home or while traveling, this beautiful velvet ring box is a perfect gift. ****** Winter Themed Signature Cocktails Photo credit: Chelsea's Messy Apron This refreshing winter mocktail, with a splash of something heavier, (if you prefer!) would be perfect for a winter wedding celebration! Signature cocktails are a great way to celebrate a wedding! With a signature cocktail, you can easily have drinks on-the-ready for your wedding guests (Just say "no" to lines at the wedding reception bar!). Signature cocktails are also a great way to save money at your wedding reception on the booze tab. If you are getting married in the winter, look for a signature cocktail recipe that is winter themed or consider giving it a winter-y name, like this recipe for a Snowflake Martini. Shop this Winter Wedding Bar Sign:Signature Drink Menu SignMade by: Sincerely by Nicole ****** Shop this Winter Wedding Bar Sign:Acrylic Snowflake Drink TagMade by: Layla Belle Design ****** Photo credit: White Rabbit Studios via Brides What better way to warm up for a wedding that a hot cocoa bar for you and your guests?! There are so many great ideas to put together a simple hot cocoa bar! You could talk to your caterer about adding a hot cocoa bar during the dessert instead of (or in addition to!) coffee, have them put out marshmallows, chocolate shavings and whip cream, of course! Your wedding guests will love a hot cocoa warm up at your winter wedding! Shop this hot chocolate bar essential: Hot Cocoa Bar Sign Printable Made by: Min Mac The easiest last minute addition to your wedding is complete with this easy printable from Etsy. Simply purchase and print out this Hot Chocolate Bar sign to let your guests know about this special treat. ****** Shop this hot chocolate bar essential:Personalized Coffee CupsMade by: GB Design House Order these cute custom stamps to adorn coffee cup sleeves for your hot cocoa and coffee bar. Guests will enjoy warming up with your wedding hot cocoa bar while holding a customized cup for the special occasion. ****** Winter Wedding Decor Shop this wedding sign download: Winter Wedding Printable Sign with Holly Made by: Studio Plus One Wedding guests love signage - it tells them where to go and what to do! Plus wedding signs make for great (and simple!) decor! This beautiful wedding sign is perfect for a winter wedding with its red flowers and evergreen boughs. What is even better, this is a download printable, so you can purchase it and then have it printed yourself - easy wedding signage! ****** Photo Credit: Tec Petaja via Martha Stewart How cute would these DIY winter wedding bells be!? Once your wedding ceremony is complete, you two could walk out of the church or exit your reception while your guests ring bells! Ahhh, I love it! You could use bells in place of rice, petals, bubbles or a sparkler exit at your winter wedding! A simple wedding DIY project, you could wrap a few inexpensive bells together and put the bell bundles in a basket for your wedding guests with a cute sign that says "ring for love" or "wedding bells are ringing" - there are so many cute ideas for the DIY wedding bells! Shop this Winter Wedding Decor: Burgundy Velvet Tablecloth Made by: Magpie Linens ****** Shop this Winter Wedding Decor: Wood Hexagon Wedding Arbor Made by: 303 Woods****** Shop this Winter Wedding Decor: Winter Wedding Cake Topper Made by: Birch Bar and Co****** Shop this Winter Wedding Decor: Winter Wedding Date Sign Made by: Cypress and Whim****** Shop this Winter Wedding Decor: Snow Flocked Garland Made by: Arch Way Store ****** Shop this Winter Wedding Decor: Velvet Table Runner Made by: Premier Linens ****** Shop this Winter Wedding Decor: White Fur Chiavari Chair Caps Made by: Tang Design ****** Shop this Winter Wedding Decor: Wedding Drapery Fabric Made by: Home Cart Fabrics ****** Shop this Winter Wedding Decor: Winter Wedding Escort Card Template Download Made by: Shop Jandy ****** Shop this Winter Wedding Decor: Birch Candle Holders Made by: Arch Way Store ****** Shop this Winter Wedding Decor: Winter Wreath Placecards Made by: Justice Designs Events ****** Winter Wedding Favor Ideas Photo Credit: Lotus Blossom Photography via Brit & Co. Looking to gift your wedding guests with a small favor - every wedding guest loves an edible favor! Something delicious that your guests can enjoy after the wedding celebration makes for the best favors! DIY wedding favors, aka making the wedding favors all by yourself for your guests, can be tough because it is a lot of work, especially at the end of the wedding planning journey, Think 200+ perfect cookies or 200+ cupcakes! There are many steps to make a perfect cookie or cupcake, but a simple recipe like bark would be ideal as a wedding favor. Bark is easy to make and can be made for a large crowd quickly! Add some peppermint into your bark and you have the perfect DIY favor for any winter wedding! Here are some really great recipes for peppermint bark. Maybe you'll find a great recipe here for your winter wedding! Put your bark in a clear bag, wrap with a ribbon and some evergreen and you are done - the best and easiest favor of a winter wedding! ****** Shop this wedding favor: Wedding Favor Tags Made by: Viola Mirabilis Design ****** Shop this wedding favor: Donut Wedding Favor Boxes Made by: H Harper Co Serving warm donuts as a wedding favor on your big day? Be sure to package them up beautifully to impress your guests and provide a picture worthy send-off! Your friends and family will surely be posting these on their instagram.****** Shop this wedding favor: Baby It's Cold Outside Favor Bag Made by: Details on Demand****** Shop this wedding favor: Hot Cocoa Bomb Favor Made by: Chocolates Unlimited****** Never be afraid to start small when thinking about how to keep your wedding day cohesive - sometimes the most intimate detail, like your wedding garter, can become the cornerstone of your big day! For more of my wedding ideas and inspirations, be sure to check out my blog and you can shop all of my wedding garter designs. With love, The Garter Girl Some of the above product links are affiliate-connected and purchasing through these links helps to support the blog.
Learn how to make a Snowstorm in a Jar, one of the best science activities for kids. Perfect for winter or weather preschool curriculums.
Hold the most magical prom your school has ever seen.
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.
Planning for a significant wedding in cold seasons? Winter wonderland is probably one of the best ideas, because it embodies all things magical, mysterious and most of all, romantic. If you live in a place where there’s no snow, you can create a real winter fairy tale world using frosted trees, glasses, glitters, white flowers,[...] READ ARTICLE
Using our bespoke creative styling our Winter Wonderland Theme will transform your event space. Enquire now for your Christmas Event 2023.
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.
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.
Softly glowing lights in snow-covered trees... winter wonderland. Bring the glistening wonder inside with these easy winter themed party ideas.
PartySlate is here to help bring your event vision to life with this curated list of winter party ideas. See 17 ideas now.
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.
Winter Wonderland Party Theme. Party theme decorators who can transform your event space into a magical Winter Wonderland setting.
Planning for a significant wedding in cold seasons? Winter wonderland is probably one of the best ideas, because it embodies all things magical, mysterious and most of all, romantic. If you live in a place where there’s no snow, you can create a real winter fairy tale world using frosted trees, glasses, glitters, white flowers,[...] READ ARTICLE
Have fun over the festive season with these amazing DIY Christmas party games for the little ones.
Here are 2 fun ways to set up a winter sensory bin for kids! Both of these ideas are easy to create and make great fine motor activities!
Get DIY inspiration for your winter wedding party, here!
Today we are playing double duty by making an adorable snowball bucket decoration and playing a few fun games! This is the perfect winter break boredom buster for restless kiddos. Supplies needed to make this project: FloraCraft® Make It: Fun® Foam: Balls (These foam balls come in lots of sizes so you can grab whatever ones […]
Learn how to make pretend snow with only 2 simple ingredients. The perfect winter sensory play idea.
If you’re planning a unique winter themed wedding it’s time to get a move on, and Poptop’s got 26 ideas to make your winter wedding a little more festive!
Hey all! I'm Kelly, the writer, creator and cook behind the blog Live Laugh Rowe. I'm tickled silly to be here today! Can you believe that Thanksgiving
Planning for a significant wedding in cold seasons? Winter wonderland is probably one of the best ideas, because it embodies all things magical, mysterious and most of all, romantic. If you live in a place where there’s no snow, you can create a real winter fairy tale world using frosted trees, glasses, glitters, white flowers,[...] READ ARTICLE
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.
It's a winter wonderland outside and now you can create a winter wonderland inside with a festive signature cocktail.
Using our bespoke creative styling our Winter Wonderland Theme will transform your event space. Enquire now for your Christmas Event 2023.
Having a winter baby? Congratulations! The winter is a great time to have a Winter Wonderland Baby Shower. Below are tons of great ideas of how you can plan your winter wonderland baby shower. Keep in mind that these are ideas to inspire you. You can be as simple or as elaborate as you want to be. Baby It's Cold Outside Baby Shower Winder Wonderland Baby Shower Decorations You will notice that WHITE is a general theme for a winter wonderland baby shower. You can complement the white with whatever meets your fancy. If you are having a boy, you
Um... they turned the Ritz-Carlton into a glammed out ice castle... you really need to see this!
A Winter wonderland wedding is one of the most popular winter wedding themes, it creates for you a mystical fairy tale everywhere!
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.
Bring some fun in your home with this Winter Wonderland Slime recipe! Your kids will enjoy it for hours - perfect for when you're stuck inside on a cold day.
Printable winter word search puzzle. A fun indoor activity for a cold day. There are 16 hidden winter themed words for kids to find and circle. Answers are included with the downloadable pdf.
A simple milk science project even Frosty the Snowman will love. Explore winter chemistry with fun color changing milk experiment.
Here we have your one-stop-shop for planning the dreamiest winter wedding, with ideas, inspiration and decorations that'll help you realise your vision
Winter Theme fundraiser at Pierre Hotel
Planning for a significant wedding in cold seasons? Winter wonderland is probably one of the best ideas, because it embodies all things magical, mysterious and most of all, romantic. If you live in a place where there’s no snow, you can create a real winter fairy tale world using frosted trees, glasses, glitters, white flowers,[...] READ ARTICLE
Having a winter baby? Congratulations! The winter is a great time to have a Winter Wonderland Baby Shower. Below are tons of great ideas of how you can plan your winter wonderland baby shower. Keep in mind that these are ideas to inspire you. You can be as simple or as elaborate as you want to be. Baby It's Cold Outside Baby Shower Winder Wonderland Baby Shower Decorations You will notice that WHITE is a general theme for a winter wonderland baby shower. You can complement the white with whatever meets your fancy. If you are having a boy, you
Using our bespoke creative styling our Winter Wonderland Theme will transform your event space. Enquire now for your Christmas Event 2023.
