Fun for Kids Outside (at Home) in the Middle of Winter

Boy in Woods with Stick

"Exploring" in the woods with a stick in hand is how this boy is happiest. The above photo is a rare moment of calm, though; usually he's using his latest, greatest stick as a club to whack things, or pretending it's a spear/sword/bow. 

Both my kids always end up finding activities to be engrossed in outdoors in all seasons, even on the rare days when they at first say they didn't feel like going out. 

We try to go outside every day even during this season of cold and dark. It's easy to find things to do when there is fresh snow: we head out with the purpose of shoveling steps and porches, or sledding, or building a snow creation. But most of the time we bundle and head out just for the sake of the routine of getting out, even when no specific purpose particularly calls us. While I love our family outings to go cross-country skiing or ice skating, just hanging out in the yard on an average weekday afternoon when it's twenty degrees outside is not always something I personally feel like. But it's always worth just doing. This is a lesson I have had to learn over and over. They find things to do. Outdoors has the power to restore every day, not just on the fair-weather days. Cheeks turn pink, moods lift, conversations are had that wouldn't have been had face-to-face at the kitchen table, treasures are discovered, games invented. Afterward we all feel more ready for whatever is next, more tired-in-a-good-way at the end of the day, more connected with the world around us. 

Here are some of the things my kids have been loving to do outside right now.

Fun for Kids Outside (at Home) in the Middle of Winter:

• Go sledding. My kids don't even require a sled lately.    

• Snurf. W's snurfer has provided a lot of entertainment. 

• Build a snow person or fort or other creation. Compare said creations or build together. 
• Shovel the steps or porch.   

• Shovel a path around the perimeter of your yard. We started doing this years ago for our dog, who doesn't like to walk through deep snow. Now he's older and doesn't venture too far regardless, but we've kept up the habit. We all use it, and creating it after a big snow is a satisfying project. 

• Look for animal tracks and try to follow where they go. Sometimes we take photos of them with Google Lens and try to identify them. They love to imagine the busy nightlife of the animals right in our backyard. Tiny little mouse prints are just as cool to see as deer. 
• Venture into the woods. W especially loves to go beyond our fenced yard and "explore" in the woods. He loves to check out remnants of an old foundation, find perfect sticks for doing this or that, or play hide and seek in one area for a while. They discover things just by being there. A few weeks ago they discovered little spots like air bubbles on the bark of an evergreen tree behind our garage. When they poked at the spots with a stick, clear, gooey pitch/sap came out, sometimes as much as half a teaspoon. They tried to "collect" it and used it to glue leaves to stumps and things. Hopefully they weren't harming the tree, but they both were so joyful discovering this neat little phenomenon. 

Harvesting pitch

• Dig a tunnel through a snowbank and try to crawl through. 
• Bring hot chocolate in a thermos and drink it outdoors. 
• Throw snowballs at a target-- the swing set, a certain tree, the fence post. 
• Snow volcano-- usually I don't plan at all for outside time, but one day I brought the supplies out for this snow volcano I'd seen online, and they got a kick out of it. After a while M had fun just spreading around the colorful foam we'd created.

• Spray colored water on snow. M enjoys putting water and food coloring in a spray bottle and misting the snow banks or snow sculptures. 
• Take photos of cool things, like these upside-down icicles we found.

• Go for a walk. While the kids never bore of the yard, some days I make them go for a walk. They search ever-optimistically for dropped antlers, climb the snow banks, and generally continue to act like kids outdoors even when we are covering some distance.