Winter is a fun time for kids. They get to spend time playing in the snow, getting excited for the holidays, and cozying up by the fire. While your children enjoy spending time outside during the snowy months, sometimes the Minnesota weather is much too cold, making it necessary for your kiddos to stay inside.
Instead of watching your children sit around complaining about how bored they are or allowing them to watch endless hours of TV, plan some fun winter crafts that they can do during these cold days when going outside is simply not an option. There are many fun winter crafts that your children can make that will keep them busy all day long.
At Yellow Brick Road Early Childhood Development Center, we know that it can be hard to keep your kids entertained, especially during long breaks. Not only are crafts a great way to keep them busy, but crafts are also beneficial for many reasons. Crafts test your child’s ability to follow directions, they help them improve their concentration, and they allow your child to be creative. So, while you may think crafts are simply a way to keep your children entertained and busy during days stuck indoors, you are actually providing them with an extremely beneficial activity.
In this blog, we wanted to go over some popular and fun winter crafts for kids that you can plan for those bitterly cold days. We know that some parents are not as crafty as others, which is why we wanted to give you some ideas to get started! Read on and start getting crafty!
Toilet Paper Roll Crafts
You could just throw your empty toilet paper rolls away, or you could save them for some fun crafts! Your kids can turn toilet paper rolls into adorable penguins or snowmen with this easy craft project.
For these projects, you will need:
- Toilet paper rolls
- Colored construction paper
- Googly eyes
- Black marker
- Scissors
- Glue
If you do not have colored construction paper, you can just use white paper with markers!
For the penguin, you will want to cut out a black rectangle that covers the entire toilet paper roll, a half oval out of white paper, and two wing-shaped pieces from the black paper. You will also want to cut a triangle for the beak and two feet out of orange paper.
Once everything is cut out, your child can start gluing! Wrap the black paper around the toilet paper roll and glue the back so it stays in place. Then they can glue the white piece, which is the belly and face of the penguin, onto the roll, with the straight edge lining up at the bottom of the toilet paper roll.
To glue on the wings, have your child only glue the upper part of the wing, so they can flap a little. Glue part of the feet on the inside of the toilet paper roll so that they stick out from underneath the penguin. Then glue the beak toward the top of the white oval and centered, leaving room for some googly eyes. The final step is to add the eyes!
For the snowman, you will follow the same steps except you will wrap the toilet paper roll. You will also want to cut out a long strip of colored paper to use as the scarf. You can also use colored paper to make buttons for the snowman or just use markers. Use orange paper to create a little carrot nose and finish the snowman with some googly eyes!