Occupational Therapy

Winter Letter Play Activity in Snow

by Colleen Beck
January 7, 2014

It’s pretty darn cold outside this time of year. We had fun during our last snow day and took a handful of letters into the snow to play and learn with letters in a different sensory experience….the snow! This Winter Play Activity was great for Letter Play, learning and identifying letters, and just having fun! Children of different ages can enjoy this outdoor learning activity. Toddlers enjoy locating letters hidden in the snow while they can begin to identify letter names and colors. Preschoolers can work on letter identification as they search for and find letters in the snow. Older children in kindergarten and above can spell words as they find letters. This was the perfect letter learning activity for us, as it covered all of the kid’s age ranges.

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We used our magnetic letters
in a small patch of snow. Mom hid the letters and the kids went busy finding them. If it’s too cold where you live, it would be easy to modify this activity. Grab a plastic bin
and fill it with snow. Bring the bin indoors and play right on the floor with a towel underneath. Keep warm indoors while the kids scoop snow, find letters, and have fun with playful learning!

For more letter learning fun, It was fun to press the letters into the snow (flip them around so they show in the right direction!) I had Little Guy name the letters as they were pressed into the snow. We then matched the impression letter with the plastic letter by pressing the magnetic letter into the impression in the snow. We didn’t worry about flipping the letter around. We just pressed the letter right into the snow so that it faced the correct direction and Little Guy could match up the letters.

Finding the letters in the snow was such a fun sensory experience! If we played indoors with snow and our letters, we would pull out some scoops, spoons, and work on a little fine motor skills at the same time…maybe a good idea for next time when it IS too cold to get outside!

SO if you’re in a warmer climate, how could you modify this activity? Using shredded paper to simulate snow like we did with our Snowy Farm Sensory Bin, or create your own Sensory Snow for indoor play!

3 thoughts on “Winter Letter Play Activity in Snow”

Cerys Parker

January 13, 2014 at 10:05 pm

What a great activity – we did this with numbers last year and looking forward to having snow so we can move onto letters.

Thank you for linking up to Tuesday Tots last week and just letting you know that I will be featuring this over on Rainy Day Mum this week.
Eva Lewis (The Multitasking Mummy)

January 16, 2014 at 3:52 am

Oh wish we had snow here in Queensland, Australia! Might have to try this with sand. Thanks for linking up at Mummy Mondays.
Boy Mama Teacher Mama

January 20, 2014 at 1:28 am

There are so many fun snow ideas around now, but we have no snow! 🙁 Thank you for sharing at After School!