Crafts This is a great way to engage children, and at the same time, make them learn a thing or two about the winter season. A simple craft activity for kids is to make a snowman out of paper plates. Provided below are the stepwise instructions for the same. Things Needed: Two paper plates, a red ribbon, black and red construction paper, colored markers, scissors, a hole punch, and glue. Instructions: Take one of the paper plates, and cut out about two inches from all sides so as to form a smaller round paper plate out of it. This will serve as the face of the snowman. Next, punch a hole near the edge of both the paper plates. Take the ribbon, and tie both the paper plates together, by inserting the ribbon in both the holes, in such a way that you are able to make a beautiful bow with it in the front. Take the black construction paper, and draw two boots and a hat on it. Make the cutouts with scissors, and stick them on the snowman. Next, take the red paper, and make two mittens on it. Again, take out the cutouts, and stick them on the snowman. In the end, with a black marker, draw the eyes, as well as the buttons on the body. With a red marker, draw a triangular nose, and a smiling mouth. This activity can be easily conducted with kids above five years of age. However, make sure that they use the scissors and the glue under adult supervision. If it's a large group of children, ensure that you have two to three adults to help you out with this activity. Outdoor Winter Fun When it comes to outdoor activities, you just have to be a bit creative, and you will be surprised at the number of ideas you can think of:

• Snowball fight
• Building a snow fort
• Building a snowman
• Shovel snow around the house, or on the school playground
• For younger kids - taking a nature walk. For older kids - taking photographs of the snow, birds, and trees
• Building an igloo
• Check out the animals and birds around, and draw their pictures.
• Observing the changes in the sky at different points throughout the day, right from morning, afternoon, evening, and night.
• Enjoying hot chocolate in the sun
• Playing games such as writing names on the snow with the feet, or making different shapes on it using spray bottles, which have colored water in them

Flashcards This is a good way to educate the kids about various winter animals and birds. You can prepare flashcards with the pictures of polar bear, arctic fox, reindeer, harbor seal, pacific walrus, snowy owl, red squirrel, winter wren, hermit thrush, woodpecker, fox sparrow, etc., which you will easily find on the Internet. Start the activity by showing these pictures to the kids, and tell them the names of all the creatures. Once they are able to identify these, plan a quiz with the same flashcards to test how much they are able to retain. To make it fun, give one candy for each right answer.