Winter Crafts for Kids

Winter brings a rare beauty that’s full of inspiration for craft projects. The snow and ice thrill children and spark many great creative ideas. It’s also when we tend to spend more time indoors, all of which makes it a perfect opportunity to create wonderful art and explore different craft techniques.

Make an Indoor Snowman

If you’ve tired of making a life-sized snowman outdoors, try this indoor project with the kids which conjures up a fat, round snowman from two paper plates.

• Two paper plates
• Sticky tape or staples
• Black paper
• Scrap woollen fabric
• Pipe cleaners
• Coloured pens
• Cotton wool

1. Use one paper plate for the snowman’s body and the other for his head. You will need to make this plate slightly smaller than the other and the easiest way to do this is by cutting away the corrugated rim of the plate.

2. Now attach the two plates together using tape at the back of the snow man or even staples. Don’t worry the staples will be covered by the snowman’s scarf.

3. Use a piece of plain black paper to cut out shapes for a hat and small round dots for the eyes and a ‘smile’. Glue these items to the snowman. You can also use small black paper dots for a line of buttons down the snowman’s body.

4. Draw in an orange triangle to make a carrot nose. Finally use a small scrap of woolly fabric and some PVA glue to stick a warm, woollen scarf in place.

If you wish, you can make the snow man more authentic using pipe cleaners to give him twig arms.

Kids enjoy finishing off their snowman by randomly sticking blobs of fluffy cotton wool all over the snow man to give that proper, snowy effect.

Paper Towel Penguins

A simple craft project with the kids is a wintry penguin, made from an empty toilet roll tube. Cut a circle just larger than the circumference of the toilet roll from a piece of orange card and fix the tube to this base to create some penguin ‘flippers’.

Take the toe of a pair of black opaque tights and pack tightly with cotton wool or paper to make a head. Fix this to the top of the penguin.

Paint the body and head of the penguin using a matt black paint, but make sure you leave a white bib at the front to recreate traditional penguin markings.

Finish your snowy creature by adding googly eyes, a small triangle of orange paper for a beak and two small black wings either side of the tube body.

Patterns in the Snow

Wrap up warm and winter can be a wonderful time to get outside and do some really interesting winter crafts with the kids.

There are the obvious activities like building a snowman or making ‘snow angels’ but what about more ‘crafty’ ideas like snow patterns and mosaics.

Agree on a design or theme for your snow art. Some people use a ‘snow angel’ as their starting point. This involves someone lying in the snow and sweeping their arms and legs to and fro to create two wide arcs. When they carefully step away, a beautiful snow angel with full skirts and glorious wings should be revealed.

Alternatively, sketch your design out with a stick. Once the outline has been created, it’s time to gather some natural mosaic materials and features. These are surprisingly plentiful in the depths of winter. Try to collect some really interesting items like evergreen foliage, moss, non- toxic rosehips, pebbles and twigs. When food is very scarce during midwinter, what about making a design from colourful birdseed or pulses? Your design is then pretty, crafty and a real bonus for our hungry, feathered friends.

Winter may a time to snuggle up and when it seems there’s not much to do; the season presents a whole new world of craft opportunities for kids to enjoy.