This winter sensory activity happened one day when we had a school closure(the first one in like 15 years!). It started inside then moved outside for some beautiful colored icy snow sculptures. The kids had so much fun painting snow, it really kept them engaged for a long time.
We have had a record-breaking winter here on the west coast this year. There has been so much snow and we have been finding lots of “snowy” things to do, sledding has been a definite favorite of my kids. We have been trying to take advantage of this weather as much as possible, who knows when it will come around like this again!
A Winter Sensory Activity
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Supplies:
- Containers for snow
- Containers for mixing colors
- Paintbrushes
- Food coloring
- Various scoops, ice cube trays, plastic scissors, anything that you think might be fun to explore snow with. I grabbed some play dough tools, used empty chocolate boxes and just had a look around the kitchen for some ideas. I love these scoops and these Gator Grabber tweezers are awesome!
- Towels and a drop cloth(or just more towels) to catch the mess
Instructions
Related: Snowflake Watercolor Winter Art
1. Mix up your colors by filling your containers and then adding a few drops of food coloring to each container. I used small yogurt containers and put about 10 drops of food coloring in each one.
2. Get out all the snow “tools” you want to use. Put down your drop cloth or towels and have some extra towels ready to catch any mess while the kids are playing.
3. Go outside and fill your containers with as much snow as you like. Place your colors in the containers of snow and put a paintbrush in each colored container.
4. Stand back and let your kids explore and have fun! Very quickly my son started using his scooper and scooped snow into trays and empty chocolate boxes. My daughter had fun putting the snow into differently shaped ice cube trays and then painting them all sorts of colors.
We moved outside to paint the snow in our backyard
Related: Winter Snow Globe Craft with Chalk Pastels
We decided to take our containers outside and paint the snow in the backyard. The kids had a blast scooping the snow and splattering it with colors!
We began to create our beautiful colored snow sculptures
For the ice sculptures, we used the scoop to scoop the snow and drop color onto the scooped snow. Then we stacked them up to make little ice towers. We did the same with the ice cube trays, putting the snow in the trays, coloring the snow and stacking it to make colored ice towers.
These turned out so amazing. I love how beautiful and colorful they looked. This was my favorite part, I loved creating little colorful snow sculptures.
This winter sensory activity was a huge hit with the kids and didn’t really require a lot of effort on my part. They were completely engaged with the snow containers inside, scooping the snow, painting it, and making little molds with the ice cube trays.
Going outside to paint our backyard was awesome, there were no restrictions on keeping the snow from making a mess on the floor so the kids just went for it and splattered paint everywhere. Making and stacking the little snow sculptures was so much fun, we all loved creating little-colored towers of snow.
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