Fun Indoor Winter Activities for Toddlers

More often than not, staying at home in comfort and warmth is understandably more preferable. Discover our top 9 indoor winter activities for toddlers with Purebaby now.

Creating a Water Bottle Snowman

The perfect activity for a chilly weekend afternoon, create a family of water bottle snowman with your little one. This fun craft uses items you likely already have around the house, making it easy to prepare at the last minute.

Start by emptying and drying off a few different sized water bottles to use in the snowman family. Next, gather supplies to decorate each member of the household—think textas, pens, paper, q-tips, puffy paint, ribbon, buttons and feathers. Once each snowman family member has been created, fill it with shredded paper, cotton balls or packing peanuts to bring it to life.

Indoor Treasure Hunt

Turning your home into a wonderous treasure hunt is great for letting your little one burn off energy as they scavenge for clues. There are several different ways to run it, from hiding many of the same object (such as balls or feathers) around the house, to giving them a clue where they must find the next clue and so on.

However you like to run it, we love to make a big celebration at the end to encourage their effort throughout it. Sometimes it’s a new toy, while other times it could be a healthy snack.

Hand & Finger Painting

As fun as it is messy, hand and finger painting is a great way to stimulate your child imagination. All that you need is a large piece of paper (ideally A3 or bigger), some paints and cleaning supplies on-hand. Get your little one to paint a scene from their imagination, such as of the house or the family pet.

When choosing paints, select a water-based paint that has been created with children in mind. This means a paint that does not contain common allergens and is far easier to wash off than acrylic paints. Homemade child-friendly paint can also be created using a mixture of cornstarch, flour, water and food dye.

Obstacle Course or Maze

Get them active with an exciting indoor obstacle course. Designate a room or two for this activity and gather chairs, tables, cushions and blankets to build it. Rather than having a clear start and endpoint, create a maze of structures using your furniture to keep them engaged for longer.

For extra fun, put some of their toys inside the obstacle course so they can bring them along on their adventures. Be sure to remove anything that could be stood on or broken from the rooms before you begin building it.

Sensory Bin

Using a bin, bucket or another large container, fill it with lots of different household objects that have unique sensory feelings. When your little one grabs an object, get them to describe what they think it is based on what it feels like.

Let them use their imagination to figure out what it could possibly be. We like to include a mix of soft and rough items in our sensory bins, such as feathers and cotton wool, which then contrasts well with metal and hard plastic objects in there.

Baking Together

Whether you’re creating a healthy snack together or cooking up a delicious cake, baking with your little one is a rewarding experience both of you can enjoy. Since we want them to get involved in the process, we like to choose a simple recipe that uses minimal ingredients.

One of our favourite recipes to make with a little chef is simple choc chip cookies. Not only can they help knead the mixture, but they can also roll the dough into balls for the cookies to be made from and don’t use any hot ingredients.

Puzzles

Puzzles are a fun and easy way to keep your toddler occupied for hours on end. They can be a great educational tool that can assist in the early development of learning numbers, letters, animals and more.

In particular, wooden puzzles have a great tactile finish to them making them great for curious toddlers. We have a mixture of shape, animal, number and letter-based puzzles we like to rotate with our little one. That way they stay engaged even though they may have done it a few months ago.

Indoor Bowling

Just as fun as heading to the local bowling alley, you can easily create your own 10-pin activity with a handful of bottles and a ball of your choosing. While it can work with at least three bottles, we prefer to gather a minimum of five for our makeshift alley.

Depending on how difficult you want the pins to be knocked over, we like to place some sand, dirt or stones in the bottom of the bottles so they are slightly more tricky to knock over. For a ball, a tennis ball, small basketball or mini soccer ball works well, while you can also use a ball made from socks too. This game will help your little one’s hand-to-eye coordination while burning lots of energy.

Pretend Play

As your toddler develops, letting them run free with their imagination during pretend play helps develop their social and emotional responses. However, since it’s cold outside you will likely want to restrict their playtime to inside.

In the spirit of the weather, you may want to give them winter-based pretend play cues, such as imagining they are a mountain explorer, a snowman or even a penguin. Don’t be afraid to join in on the fun, they will surely love it.

Discover our range of educational toys to help engage and occupy your indoors.