While the weather outside might be frightful, the learning in our classroom never stops! And what better way to celebrate the winter months than with hands-on learning activities that your students love?
Follow along for engaging winter-themed activities that focus on multiple learning areas and tons of fun!
Winter Center Time Activities
Center time offers so many opportunities for students to work on independence and academic skills. It also helps build student confidence and boost self-esteem because they feel a sense of accomplishment!
Here are a few independent, low-prep activities and make the perfect complement to your center time routine.
Practice matching and patterns with the Snowflakes Matching Mats and Activities. With 32 interactive cards, this is an excellent low-prep task for center time. For more winter matching, try this Lights Matching Mats and Activities.
Students can hone in on their fine motor skills with the Winter Fine Motor Packet. With cutting, tracing, differentiated puzzles, punch cards, q-tip art, and more, this resource is chock full of fine motor activities and can be used across several weeks.
Winter Directed Drawings focus on visual motor skills. You can put these in a center (or have them done in whole group), allowing students can follow five steps to draw a beanie, mitten, mountains, penguin, pine tree, polar bear, sled, snow shovel, snowman, or a sweater.
These Seasonal Clothing Sorting Mats allow your students to sort 24 different clothing items by season. Once this activity is prepped, it can be readily available for students at any time. For more sorting activities, try the Seasons Sorting Mats, which focuses on objects other than clothing.
Create Winter Adapted Work Binders for your students to practice basic skills that are snow and ice themed. Skills like 2D shapes, basic colors, beginning sounds, emotions, vocabulary, puzzles, patterns, winter clothing and more!
Winter Digital Activities
Students love digital activities in the classroom, and so do we! They’re great for indoor recess, center time, or when your students need a little extra work to do.
Please note: All of these resources require Google Slides!
Work on sequencing with the Winter Sequencing of Events Digital Activity. Students build a logical series of events with these functional, differentiated, and digital work pages.
Get students acquainted with community helpers and their occupations with the Winter Community Helpers Digital Activity.
Integrate money skills into your classroom with the Pay for Winter Supplies Digital Activity, where students practice basic money skills. Therefore, once they master the basics they can move on to independent skills.
What’s missing?! Students put on their thinking caps and whip out their critical thinking skills to identify missing snowman pieces with the Winter What’s Missing Digital Activity.
If you want to use digital products all season long, the Winter Digital Activity Bundle will keep your lesson planner filled to the brim. With 17 different activities, this bundle includes:
- Build a Penguin
- Calculate Change
- Comparing Groups
- Expanded Form
- Secret Puzzles
- Mitten Letter Matching
- Multiplication Snow Forts
- Occupation Matching
- Pay for Winter Supplies
- Penguin Emotions
- Simile Matching
- Snowflake Life Cycle
- Snowflake Subtraction
- Identify the Missing Part
- Winter Main Idea and Details
- Winter Sequencing
- 2D Winter Shapes
More Winter Classroom Ideas
Hot chocolate is a staple throughout the winter season, so why not bring the sweetness into your classroom? With the How to Make Hot Cocoa Adapted Book, students on Level 1 and Level 2 can practice their literacy, comprehension, and sequencing skills while learning an important life skill- how to make hot chocolate! Bring real hot chocolate supplies into the classroom for a fun lesson extension and have students create their own. Yum!
Watch your students giggle with Sneezy the Snowman, the story of a chilly snowman trying to stay warm. The Sneezy the Snowman Book Companion is the perfect addition to this book, with extra practice and skills themed around snow and snowmen. With 70 pages, this download includes:
- Writing activity (to go along with the craft- great for bulletin board displays!)
- Snowflake Visual Craft
- 9 Differentiated cut/paste and tracing worksheets
- Snowball Counting to 10 Task Box
- Sneezy the Snowman Adapted Piece Book Set
- Visual Recipe for Snowman Dip
- How to Build a Snowman Adapted Book
In addition, this companion is also included in the December Lesson Plan Pack.
Here’s a quick look at the Sneezy the Snowman Adapted Piece Book Set being put together:
January Visual Recipes with REAL Photos brings five no-bake cooking recipes into the classroom. This pack includes step-by-step visuals to make hot cocoa dip, lunch box kabobs, melted snowmen, snow mix, and cranberry and raisin logs. The recipe cards list the kitchen tools and ingredients needed, so you’re ultra-prepared.
The January Lesson Plan Pack | 12 Activities for Math, ELA, and Science is filled with winter fun! This pack is great to have on hand and features low-prep activities around the theme of Winter. In addition, it includes adapted books, book companions, task box activities, and more.
Here’s a look at The Color Monster Book Companion too:
Winter doesn’t have to be gloomy and these activities help to brighten your students’ day. Do you need winter classroom inspiration? Tell us which activities you’re excited to try in the comments below!
