by: jannalabarriePosted on:

12 simple at-home activities to do with toddlers in the winter  

As winter approaches, early sunsets and cold breezes means we can’t spend as much time outdoors as we used to.

The days of letting our toddlers run wild outside to burn off all their extra energy are gone – at least until the winter’s over.

In the meantime, working toddler moms are faced with a new weekend challenge – finding things to do with our kids inside the house. Yikes.

Doing activities together indoors can actually be a chance to connect, learn, and bond with our kids.

It can also help promote the development of their fine motor and communication skills that are essential for everyday function. 

In this post, I’ll share 12 of my favorite ideas for easy at-home activities to do with my toddler during the winter season.

12 simple at-home activities to do toddlers in the winter

When my son is at daycare during the work week, I don’t worry so much about finding ways to keep him active in the winter – it’s usually just a continuous rush from pickup to dinner to bath time to bed.

But when the weekends roll around and it’s freezing outside, I have to get creative.

I try to do things that won’t make a huge mess, take a lot of money, or require advanced crafting skills that I don’t have.

One thing I have to keep in mind is that toddlers don’t have very long attention spans, so I don’t expect him to spend all day doing any one particular thing.

I usually will choose one new activity for the weekend and my son will rotate around to it several times in between his usual play.

1. Simple winter crafts

Crafts aren’t just for crafty people. There are many simple ideas out there that are fun, easy to do, and help develop our kids’ fine motor and concentration skills.

One really simple idea that I love for the winter is snowman decorating.

All we need is a snowman template – we can find tons of free printouts online or draw our own – and whatever we have on hand to decorate it.

That could be cotton balls, pom poms, or even shreds of paper.

This cotton ball snowman craft and torn paper snowman craft are lots of fun to do with my 2 year old. 

Christmas tree decorating is also a perfect idea for this time of year.

This Christmas tree sticker craft is a really fun and easy idea for toddlers.

My son isn’t too keen on staying on the lines and would rather put stickers everywhere randomly, but that’s okay too.

Of course, we can use other things besides stickers – pom poms, cotton balls, construction paper cutouts – we can get creative and try different things to see what our child likes.  

2. Indoor bowling

Indoor bowling is a great idea for easy and cheap at-home fun.

We can do this with a purchased bowling set for kids or just use any soft ball and empty water bottles from the recycling bin.

I don’t actually follow bowling ‘rules’ per-say – we just set up a few water bottles and let our toddler have at it.

I love it as an indoor activity because it’s not messy, doesn’t damage anything in the house, and lets him get a little physical play in.

It can also be an opportunity to work on throwing, math (if we knock down 1 pin, how many do we have left?), and hand-eye coordination.

3. Indoor basketball

Similar to bowling, indoor basketball is an easy way to get our kids active and stimulate conversation about numbers and counting.

It also helps develop hand-eye coordination and motor skills, and gives our kids to chance to work on throwing and catching.

We usually make our own version with soft balls and the latest empty Amazon box, but we can also purchase an actual kid’s set online.

4. Baking cookies 

Can toddlers help with baking? Actually, yes, they can.

They can help with stirring pre-measured ingredients together, using cookie cutters on rolled out dough, transferring spoonfuls of dough onto a baking sheet or muffin tin, and of course, decorating.

Baking might be a little messier than the other options on this list, so I prefer to keep it simple with store-bought mixes over recipes.

When we do follow a recipe, I like this sugar cookie recipe and also this healthier peanut butter thumbprint cookie recipe..

5. Winter-themed scavenger hunt 

This one is simple but so much fun for toddlers who love to look for hidden things.

It’s as easy as hiding some winter-themed items around the house (like Christmas ornaments, pine cones, or pictures of typical winter/ Christmas things like snowmen or snowflakes), and then going around trying to find them on our very own scavenger hunt.

We can take the activity up a notch by doing something fun with the items after we find them, like using the ornaments to decorate our Christmas tree or painting the pine cones.

6. Having a dance party 

Is there anything more adorable than a dancing toddler? They love to dance, and we love to see it.

Plus, it gets their little bodies moving and grooving, which helps to keep them active even when outdoor play isn’t an option in the winter.

An at-home dance party can be as simple as turning on a YouTube ‘toddler favorites’ playlist and dancing it up together, or it can be more extravagant and include fun props like shakers or play instruments, or even costumes. When it comes to kids, the sillier the better.

My toddler loves to dance to songs with commands to follow, like “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” and freeze dancing songs. 

7. Pretend play 

Pretend play might just seem like a cute little thing that toddlers do, but it actually has a significant role in their social and emotional development.

One of our favorite versions of this type of play is pretend restaurant with our little food set. My son loves propping up all his stuffies and serving them ‘meals at the table.’

We also get to talk about different types of foods and colors while working on our social skills.

8. No-mess sensory bin 

If the first word that pops into our heads when we think of a sensory bin is MESS, that’s understandable.

I tend to stay away from them at home for exactly that reason.

But there are actually plenty of no-mess sensory bins out there that don’t involve tracking down grains of rice under the furniture.

The thing about sensory bins is that they have such great benefits for toddlers, so it’s worth a try as long as they’re reasonably easy to clean up and store.

They can also occupy our toddlers for a relatively long time and spark lots curiosity and exploration of different textures.

We like this cotton ball sensory bin and this tissue paper one. For more ideas, check out this post. 

9. Mystery box

We love a good mystery box. It’s so simple to make and helps our toddlers explore their sense of touch in a safe way.

It’s basically a closed non-see-through container with an opening for tiny hands to reach into.

We can make this literally a million different ways; using a cardboard box, an empty wipes container, a shoebox… the whole point is that our toddler can’t see what’s inside but can feel it, using only their sense of touch to explore an object and maybe even try to guess what it could be.

Inside the box, we can put a variety of things with different textures and shapes like fruits, toys, squishy balls, blocks etc. 

10. Animal rescue 

This animal rescue game is popular among toddler parents, and for good reason – it’s simple, easy to set up, non-messy, and can keep a toddler engaged for a good while (as far as toddler attention spans go).

All we need is tape and some toy animals. We just tape the animals down into a surface and instruct our toddler to “rescue” them.

That’s it, that’s the game.

My son loves playing with tape, and he can spend a good amount of time working on it while I sip my coffee in peace.

It’s also great for helping him work on his fine motor skills and coordination.

We sometimes put the animals in their pens or back on the farm after rescuing them, adding another layer to the game.

11. Extreme Box Decorating 

I absolutely love this extreme box decorating activity.

Not only does it make use of the mountain of Amazon boxes piled up in the corner of our home, it’s also very creative and requires virtually no setup or extra space.

We just need a big empty cardboard box and stickers/ markers/ construction paper/ crayons to decorate it.

Sometimes we make it themed (I love a good theme – fruits, shapes, flowers, animals, colors etc.), other times we just do random stuff. z

My son loves crafts, so he usually jumps at any opportunity to break out the markers and stickers.

That’s one less box to break down for us and an engaging activity for our toddlers.

Everybody wins. 

12. At-home obstacle course

For something a little more physical, at-home obstacle courses can be fun and easy to do at home if we have the space.

We can purchase soft tunnels for them to crawl through, foam blocks to climb over, soft stepping-stones to hop on, cones to run around, or hoops/ rings to jump into.

At the end of the course, we can have an activity station with something fun to do, like a small puzzle to complete or a ball to toss into an empty box.

We don’t have a lot of space, so I usually set up a small version that includes just a few rings and cones, but my son still has a lot of fun with it and gets a little sweat in when we’re all cooped up inside.

When winter rolls around, we might be spending a lot more time at home with our toddlers.

It seems daunting trying to think of ways to keep them entertained all day in the house, but there are lots of low-hassle and mess-free options out there that we don’t have to spend a ton of time planning.

Toddlers are often satisfied with the simple things anyway.

Indoor play can actually be an opportunity to connect and spend quality time with our kids while working on developing essential motor and communication skills.

Before we know it, the season will be over and we’ll be back to chasing them outside again.

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