Snow and Ice Activities

These snow and ice activities are more winter occupational therapy activities that kids will love! Use these snow activities and ice themed ideas to help kids develop skills during the cold winter months. They are great additions to real ice play and build a variety of developmental skills.  

We’re trying to stay warm these days by playing indoors or bundling up and heading outside.  Some days it’s just too cold to play outside with small kids and these indoor winter activities are fun ways to keep the kids learning when the temps dip! 

snow and ice activities

Snow and Ice Activities

For specifically fine motor skill-building, be sure to check out the Winter Fine Motor Kit, the Snowman Therapy Kit, and the Penguin Therapy Kit. Each one includes different activities and they all develop fine motor, gross motor, visual motor, sensory, handwriting, scissor skills, and self-regulation skills through winter play.

 

Winter snow and ice activities for kids
 
 

These winter crafts are fun ways to explore the senses during the cold winter months. Kids will love the winter fine motor play ideas, too.

Looking for more fun winter activities?  

Fine motor snow number puzzles

These ice number puzzles are a great fine motor activity. Kids can cut out the puzzles. Then, laminate them (or not!) and use them to work on fine motor skills. I love using tweezers or tongs to have kids move craft pom poms or mini erasers to match the ice number. This is such a great activity for building so many skills:

  • Scissor skills
  • Bilateral coordination
  • Visual scanning
  • Crossing midline
  • Fine motor strength
  • Endurance

You can find this ice number activity inside our OT Toolbox Member’s Club.

Other snow and ice printables that you can grab inside the Member’s Club (or as a free resource by entering your email into the forms on each blog post) are these snow, ice, and snowball activities:

Snow and Ice Activities indoor winter play

These fine motor play ideas are great for days when it’s too cold to play outside in the snow and ice.

  • Cut paper icicles and work on scissor skills, bilateral coordination, and eye-hand coordination. Label the icicles with sight words, math facts, vocabulary, etc. Get the kids involved in taping the icicles to the wall for shoulder strengthening, proprioceptive input, and other benefits of working on a vertical surface.
  • Make paper snowflakes for proprioceptive benefits, scissor skills, fine motor work, and bilateral coordination. Write math facts, sight words, vocab, etc. on the snowflakes.
  • Make Magic Milk Snowflakes for a fun STEAM activity that builds fine motor skills.
  • Have an indoor paper snowball fight to address motor planning, eye-hand coordination, balance, bilateral coordination, crossing midline, and more. Snowballs can be used as counters. Or, throw the paper snowballs at targets marked with facts or true/false containers.
  • Focus on fine motor skills by tearing paper. Add learning components by asking kids to first write answers on the paper, and then they can tear the page into strips or small squares. There are so many benefits to this activity!

Have fun this winter while building skills through play!

What if you had themed, NO-PREP activities designed to collect data and can help kids build essential fine motor skills?

Take back your time and start the year off with a bang with these done-for-you fine motor plans to help kids form stronger hands with our Winter Fine Motor Kit. This print-and-go winter fine motor kit includes no-prep fine motor activities to help kids develop functional grasp, dexterity, strength, and endurance. Use fun, winter-themed, fine motor activities so you can help children develop strong fine motor skills in a digital world. 

The Winter Fine Motor Kit includes reproducible activity pages include: pencil control strips, scissor skills strips, simple and complex cutting shapes, lacing cards, toothpick precision art, crumble hand strengthening crafts, memory cards, coloring activities, and so much more.

Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.

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snow and ice activities

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