Explore the beauty of winter with these winter STEAM activities for kids. STEAM activities help kids become critical thinkers, problem solvers, and innovators! Hence, GeoScienceGirls shares 15 fun STEAM activities for kids to enjoy this winter. They can be additional homeschool resources, road trip activities, or indoor activities.
Are you looking for STEAM winter activities that you can try at home? I and My kids love exploring science hands-on and investigating together.
There is no better time than a winter break to try hands-on science activities at home.
Most of these activities can be performed using simple things at home. So, explore these activities and try them with your kids this winter break.
Family Activities for Every Season!
Spring | Summer | Autumn | Winter
STEAM Winter Activities for Kids
1. Create a Tornado model in a Bottle
Create a water vortex by spinning a bottle. Teach how centripetal force uses circular motion to create a vortex that represents an actual tornado.
« https://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/soda-bottle-tornado/
2. Organize a Winter Scavenger Hunt
Bored of being indoors in winter. A scavenger hunt would help you and your kids get some fresh air while exploring the winter items available outside. Basically, create a search for items list and make a worksheet around it. Let your kid search for the items and find them. Don’t have feasible outdoor weather, don’t worry, you can easily convert this one as an indoor activity by changing the list to indoor items.
« https://teachingmama.org/winter-scavenger-hunt/
3. Create a Skittles Rainbow
Learn to convert candy to an amazing-looking rainbow. Discover the power of dissolving and how water helps to dissolve the colors from the candy. Try arranging skittles in different forms – circles, squares, etc. and add hot water to the candies to see a dissolving rainbow from them.
« https://www.kidspot.com.au/things-to-do/activity-articles/rainbow-skittles-science-experiment/news-story/e8dd4d5450c8fee379583df7f58d6767
4. Make a Walking Rainbow
A simple activity that you can do with a few glasses of water, selected good colors, and tissue papers. Make your own walking rainbow to explain Capillary action to kids.
« https://www.sciencemuseumok.org/smoathome/try-make-walking-rainbow
5. Learn time with Santa Christmas Timer Board Game
To have fun-filled family time, nothing works better than a board game. How about twisting that fun activity to learn something important? How about teaching kids to add time to this amazing Christmas-themed board game? It is available for free to download. Try it today.
6. Build shapes with Marshmallows
My kids love engineering challenges. Use marshmallows and toothpicks to build your own 3D structure. Try to build a bridge, a house, or even a triangle to start with. Let your kid’s creativity go loose to make their own 3D models. This is a perfect activity to teach shapes and sizes.
« https://homeschoolpreschool.net/building-shapes-marshmallows/
7. Create a Stunning Lava Lamp
Blob! Blob! Blob! Surprise your kids with this visual treat. Use a fizzy tablet, oil, and water to make your own Lava Lamp. You can even use it as a Halloween decoration.
« https://sciencebob.com/blobs-in-a-bottle-2/
8. Make your own Ice Lantern
Take your ice decoration to next level by making DIY ice lanterns. Add fruits, leaves, and flowers to make it look beautiful. Lit them with color candles to make your house glow. Amazing art science activity that you can enjoy with your kids.
« https://www.practicallyfunctional.com/make-ice-lanterns-ice-candles/
9. DIY Christmas Tree Ornaments
Kids love decorating Christmas Trees. Engage them to make their own Christmas Tree Ornaments. Create your own crystal ornaments, candy canes, construction paper ornaments, milk plastic molds, etc. Let your kids decorate the tree to their hearts’ content.
« https://www.steampoweredfamily.com/activities/steam-science-diy-christmas-ornaments/
10. Play with Oobleck
Is it Liquid? Or Solid? Find out about this non-Newtonian fluid. Safe and Simple science activity that you can do with cornstarch and food colors. If your kid would like to be messy, this one will be a great activity to entertain them.
« https://www.instructables.com/Oobleck/
11. Explore tracks of animals in the snow
Become a wildlife detective this winter. Explore and investigate tracks in the snow and match them with animals that you know. You can even create a worksheet to record the kid’s observations. Teach them how a tracker determines the travel directions of animals using their footprints.
« https://www.startribune.com/how-to-track-animals-in-the-snow/236621691/
12. Learn to make Snow Dough
Perfect sensory play that can be made with just baking soda and shaving cream. Let your kids create fake snow – add color to create snow dough in multiple colors. You can even make it colder by refrigerating them. Snow dough makes the perfect sensory material for toddlers.
« https://thenaturalnurturer.com/natural-2-ingredient-snow-dough/
13. Make a Crystal Snowflake
A do-it-yourself Christmas ornament that your kids will love to create. Kids can learn the process behind the creation of crystals.
Image from GoScienceGirls.com
14. Build a winter castle – An Engineering Challenge
Have a long weekend to spend with kids? Build a winter castle using cardboard or paper cups. Let your kids design this adventurous engineering challenge and build them. I love doing this with my kids in winter. Add cotton to create a snow castle effect if you wish 😊 Girls would love to play with snow castle all day long.
« https://www.parents.com/fun/activities/outdoor/build-a-snow-castle/
15. Investigate fingerprints
Use pencils and transparent glass or white paper to bring life to your kid’s fingerprints. Alternatively, you can also use cocoa powder to imprint the fingerprints on plan glass. Let your kids play detective or spy roles. Ask them to match the fingerprints. This activity helps to increase critical thinking among different age groups. You can extend the activities by asking them to use fingerprints to make creative artworks.
« https://stemforyou.com/fingerprint-activity/
On a final note…
These are some of the best winter STEAM activities you can try indoors and outdoors. Do not forget to discuss the science concepts after every activity.
To increase the fun, feel free to improvise the activities to your kid’s preference. The aim is to have fun-filled winter while learning on the side.
Feel free to check out other indoor activities to do with your kids or virtual field trips and online tours.
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Definitely a bucketlist of family activities! It’s nice to have fun using science activities for a change instead of buying them new toys or gadgets and it’s great that they get to learn some new stuff. Personally would love to do the scavenger hunt, snow dough and lava lamp.
These are soo good like i would even do these myself even if I’m longer a kid. Too bad there’s no winter here in the philippines. Huhu
These sound so fun ! I wish I had these opportunities as a child, I might try some of these now
This is perfect since it’s Winter already and kids would love to experience trying out new activities that are fun but still learn something new! I love that Santa Christmas Time board game. Thanks for these unique ideas!
There are some lovely ideas here Carmen. I remember investigating fingerprints when I was a child, we thought we were Sherlock Holmes!
I am so glad that I saw this post! My daughter’s winter vacation is starting from 10th December and I love doing STEAM activities with her . I am going to try these activities for sure…
These sound like so much fun. I think the whole family would enjoy a scavenger hunt or making crystal snowflakes. What a wonderful list.