When the wintry weather hits, it’s always good to keep some indoor activities up your sleeves to keep your kids occupied until the snow and frosty temperatures settle down! So here are some ideas that are bound to offer hours of fun.

Sew booklets by learning simple bookbinding

Making a book isn’t as hard as you thought! Small booklets are not only practical but also adorable and fun to make. You control the size and shape. 

Use pieces from old holiday cards or other cardstock for the cover and either copy paper or line paper for the inner pages. Once you make your darling little books the sky is the limit! Fill them with a story of your own creation, use them for a sketchbook, or even keep them for yourself to keep track of to-dos and grocery lists!

There are so many different methods for binding (like the ones listed here), so you can choose a method that works with your kids’ ages and available supplies.

Set up balancing activities

Painter’s tape on the floor can lead to hours of focused and regulating movement. You can use the painter’s tape to mark out stepping stones to jump between, zig-zags to follow, or even just straight lines to use as balance beams. 

If you would like to take this to the next level, take education philosopher Maria Montessori’s advice and create a perfect Ellipse shape. Taping out the shape will engage older kids (and might even include a geometry lesson!) and younger children will engage their body and mind simultaneously. Unlike a circle or a square, an ellipse requires constant minute corrections in order to walk the line. You might even want to try it yourself! 

See here for directions on how to mark out an Ellipse.

Whip up a batch of homemade granola

Besides being a delicious crunchy treat, granola is a perfect recipe to get kids involved since the ingredient quantities are very forgiving. Older kids can create their own granola recipe and tweak the ingredient list and quantity while younger kids can simply enjoy scooping and stirring. 

Granola can make a great gift for neighbors or can be enjoyed in countless ways by your own family—with milk for breakfast, on top of yogurt, paired with peanut butter and apple slices, and more. 

Start with a basic recipe like this one and let your kids customize it to their hearts’ content!

Introduce your kids to pin-punching

Pin-punching is an inventive alternative to using scissors to cut out a shape. All you need is a design you would like cut out, a piece of cardboard (to put behind the paper), and a thumbtack. The child uses a thumbtack/pushpin to make perforations along the perimeter of the shape while the paper is on top of the cardboard piece (to protect anything behind the paper from being poked). 

Once the entire design is perforated it can easily be ripped away from the paper. This detail-oriented activity is enthralling to preschool and elementary age alike. If you have older kids who would like to take this to the next level give them a blank piece of paper and let them create a freehand design.