A mom knows that snow days off of school are exciting. The piles of snow outside make the backyard into an adventure-land. I don’t think there is a kid out there who doesn’t LOVE a big old fashioned snowball battle. And what better time to build a fort, pile mountains of snowballs, and attack the neighbors than before 8 am on a day that the school doors are frozen shut?
We read Jimmy Fallon’s children’s book, “Snowball Fight!” and came up with an indoor snowball fight math activity and a pretend snowball fight painting craft.
These are fun ways to extend a very cool book and to have a little snowball fight fun…before heading out to battle in the actual snow!
Winter Book Craft and Activity for Kids
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We love to go to the library and come home with a pile of books. I went to the library one day and came home with a bunch of winter books for us to read. The book Snowball Fight!
by Jimmy Fallon was a hit with the kids and the definite winner when we were deciding which book to do for this series.
Little Guy, especially, loved the detailed pictures, the rhythm of the story, and of course, the snowball battle that happens in the book! We decided to make our own indoor snowball fight to mimic the snowball battle in the book. I had a few more snowball-y ideas to go along with the story, too…
The children in the story are excited to have a snow day from school and rush outside to play in the new fallen snow. (It just so happened that the day we did our activities, Big Sister was home from school on a REAL snow day!) The kids in the story build a fort of snow and make tons of snowballs to get ready for a battle. They have a huge snowball fight with neighborhood kids and it’s just general old-fashioned fun!
We made our “snowballs” using foam packing sheets that were left over from Christmas packaging. These thin strips were simple to tie into a knot and make a soft fake snowball. We had a TON of snowballs, just like in the story!
Snowball Math activity based on Jimmy Fallon’s children’s book, “Snowball Fight!”
In one part of the story, the young possibly-Jimmy Fallon-character says, “Fifteen snowballs flying at me! Attack!” This was a fun part for my Little Guy. He might have asked to read that part of the book 15 times, each time yelling, “ATTACK!!!” with the most adorable four year old attacking pose you can imagine.
So to mimic that portion of the book into our activity, I wrote numbers 1-15 on our fake snowballs. We then did a little snowball math with them.
I had Big Sister and Baby Girl grab all of the snowballs with numbers on them. Baby Girl was good at this job. She handed them over to Big Sister, who would put them in numbered order in our sled.
A second math activity was beginner adding with the snowballs. Big Sister stood and tossed snowballs into the sled and bucket. We gave points for each snowball that did not hit the carpet. Snowballs in the sled earned her 1 point and snowballs in the bucket earned her two points. Once all of the snowballs were thrown, we added them up. Big Sister and I counted by 2’s for the bucket snowballs and then counted to add the 1 point snowballs to get her total score.
This snowball math activity was a bit hit. We played over and over again. And when kids want to do math facts on replay, it’s a Mom-Success.
We even made our own snow fort using a duvet blanket over our ottoman!
Jimmy Fallon’s children’s book, “Snowball Fight!” & a snowball fight painting activity
For an arty craft to go along with our book, we did some snowball painting with ping pong balls. I grabbed a big box, some blue paper, a couple of ping pong balls, and some white paint in a bowl. A bit of white paint was added to the bowl. We swirled the ping pong balls around in the paint and were ready for a paint-version of a snowball fight!
This paint activity was big time fun! The kids threw their ping pong ball “snowballs” down onto the paper and we created snowball fight art. The ping pong balls did not bounce out of the box (I think because they were weighed down with the paint), but it would be possible for a big mess to occur if your little snowball thrower has a strong arm.
Our beautiful snowball art looks just like a snowball battle in action!
We ended our activities with a living room snowball battle. “Snowball, snowball, Snowball Fight!
” Then, we went outside to have a REAL snowball fight on our snow day!
Stop by and follow Sugar Aunts Winter Fun and Play Pinterest board for more winter ideas.
, there immediately, is a ton of bouncing, rolling, flying balls of fluff sailing across the table, being rubbed on little noses, held gently in little cupped hands…and just lots of plain silliness happening??? There is just something about these cute little fuzz balls that make kids (and Mom) happy and ready to create and play! 
. Pinching the crafting poms up with clothes pins or tweezers is a great way to strengthen and develop the arches of the hands. This development is so important in handwriting and endurance while coloring.
