Fun Winter Ideas And Activities For Homeschoolers

If you live anywhere with a northern climate, (like Canada where we are), the winter season can often feel long and dull. But your homeschool doesn’t have to feel that way! Here, you will find TONS of fun winter ideas and activities for homeschoolers! 

Sometimes as a homeschool mom, coming up with new ideas to keep your kids busy can be challenging. So, I’ve done the hard work for you and am giving you a whole list of creative winter activities your kids will love! You’re going to want to save this list so that during those long winter months, you’ll be able to keep the winter blues at bay!

Fun Winter Ideas and Activities: Outdoors

If the cold weather doesn’t bother your kids too much, there’s still LOTS of fun activities to be done outdoors during the winter season. Most kids have so much fun playing around and exploring in the snow! Instead of looking at the winter weather as a negative thing, try thinking of it as a whole new world of opportunities for your children! 

Here are some of the BEST outdoor winter ideas and activities for homeschoolers:

1. Winter Nature Studies: Most of the time, when you think about a nature study, you think about spring, summer, and fall – NOT winter, when everything in nature is covered in snow! However, winter nature studies are amazing because there’s so many details about nature to observe in the winter. It’s a great way to learn how nature sustains itself during the colder months. Some nature elements your kids could look for and learn about are:

• Icicles – The various shapes and size – how do they form?
• Frost/ice crystal formation – Are any two alike? Why?
• The sparkle of fresh snow – Why does it sparkle? What causes that effect?
• Is the snow light & fluffy, or heavy and wet – Why?
• The bare tree branches – Where do the leaves grow from and when?
• Winter birds – What birds have not migrated south? How do they survive during the winter months?
• Make a bird feeder to help feed the birds that don’t migrate.
• Have them search for animal tracks in the snow and try to determine which animal made them
• If there’s a pond nearby, research the freezing point of water and how cold it would have to be (and how consistently), for the ice to be thick enough to skate on.

2. Have your children make a winter bucket list of all the fun things they want to do outside: (Ex. sledding, snowshoeing, skiing, skating, etc.) and see how much they can get checked off their list.

3. Have a snowman building contest with siblings or the homeschool group

4. Try building a toy sized igloo

5. Organize some fun winter field trips – farms, sleigh rides, winter hikes, etc

Fun Winter Ideas and Activities: Indoors

Let’s face it, sometimes, northern winters are just too cold! But here are some great ideas for fun activities on a cold day, when your homeschoolers just don’t want to go outside!

1. Do an arctic animal unit study – There are lots of wonderful free resources online for this, such as Encouraging Moms At Home; she has free printables, book suggestions, and crafts about all sorts of various arctic animals. 

2. Go on a virtual field trip – YouTube provides amazing free videos of many places and experiences, but if you’re looking for something a bit more educational, click here to visit “We Are Teachers”, where you’ll find 40 amazing virtual field trip options. 

3. Host a craft day – Invite some friends over to do some fun crafts together!

4. Audio books – Choose an audio book that everyone in the family will enjoy, grab some hot chocolate and curl up together to listen to the story.

5. Take advantage of your local library – Libraries are incredible for so many reasons, from finding good books, to getting new ideas. But sometimes they simply provide the perfect change of scenery for your homeschool day. (Especially during the winter months when cabin fever sets in!) Bring your lesson plans and enjoy the benefits of a fresh environment for learning. 

6. Learn a new skill – The colder weather is the perfect time to learn some new skills such as baking, knitting, crocheting, etc. You can even adapt your homeschool to be considered “winter homeschooling”  – where you purposely plan a time in your school day for you and your kids to learn a new skill together, that you may not have time for in the warmer months. 

7. Do a book challenge – Winter is the best time of year for reading a good book! A fun way to motivate your homeschoolers to read is creating a book challenge. You could do this by setting a reading goal and awarding prizes at the end of it! 

8. Have a regular game night together – A cold winter night is the perfect time for a family game night. Game nights are always a great time for everybody, and they create so many wonderful memories! Try choosing a specific day of the week, and commit to making that your game night throughout the winter months. 

Winter Boredom

The reality is, sometimes, we can just get bored during the winter! No matter how many fun winter activities and ideas you come up with, you can only do so much. 

But you know what? A little boredom never hurt anyone! In fact, I’m a strong believer that children are MOST creative when we allow them to be bored. Why? Because being bored forces them to get creative and make their own fun. 

Yes, it can be hard sometimes as the homeschool parent to endure the “complaints” of boredom, but from my experience, they don’t last long. And before you know it, your kids are playing, building, creating, and learning – all from their own imagination. It’s absolutely spectacular to watch!

Winter learning

As a homeschool family, there is something to be said for winter learning. It can be a great time to really focus in on some areas your kids may be struggling with.

Often throughout the warmer months, it can be harder to get things done when all our kids want to do is go outside and play! So take advantage of the cold winter season, as it may just be the right time for diving into your lesson plans. 

Many homeschool families plan their school year this way, on purpose. They know that the months with nicer weather, will be looser in regards to their school hours. So they plan the chunk of their schooling during the winter. 

This works really well for a lot of homeschoolers, and helps them establish a good winter routine. And when you are stuck inside the house a little more, having a routine you can rely on is good for EVERYBODY! 

If you want some help with creating routines within your homeschool, you may like ‘How To Set A Homeschool Routine That Works‘.

Winter Can Be A Lot Of Fun

To sum it all up, finding some fun winter activities and ideas, really isn’t that hard! Winter can actually be a lot of fun if you let it! 

Whether you chose to take a winter break and just enjoy the snow, or use winter to get some homeschool lessons done you’ve been putting off – winter can be seen as a blessing. 

Take some time to be intentional about the winter months and make them work for you! Choose some new read alouds, go on a winter hike and enjoy the great outdoors, and then curl up with some hot cocoa and a blanket to warm up. 

You can easily spend so much time dreading winter, but instead, get creative and make the winter season a blessing for the entire family! Maybe it will never be your FAVOURITE time of year, but there are certainly some benefits to it. 

Bad weather can equal fun snow activities, winter sports, and winter nature studies! It really is what you make it. 

So, my encouragement to you is, to view winter through a different lens. No, it’s not always enjoyable, but I hope this list of fun winter activities and ideas for homeschoolers has given you some inspiration to make winter work FOR your homeschool – not AGAINST it! 

Blessings!

~Maryann