Wiggly Winter Wonder: Educational Winter Outdoor Play

Your kids are climbing the walls. You are too.  They call it cabin fever, stir crazy. You're about to have a serious case of the winter wackies. But it's soooooo cold...what are some winter ways to take the learning outside?

First, focus on group activities

Cold weather may not be the ideal time for sitting still doing quiet solo activities in journals. You can always do the active stuff outside and then come back in for reflection. Focusing on group activities will build skills like teamwork, cooperation, and creativity while minimizing the time to think about whining or being cold. Group activities will also require involvement from you.  Likewise minimizing your ability to whine or lose feeling in your fingers. For starters you could...Build a life size model, host a winter Olympics, have a scavenger hunt.

Second, use big body movement

This is the best time for building those gross motor skills.  Get that blood flowing. Integrate the curricula with active play. Remember that most old fashioned running games can be easily be re-figured into a lesson. Freeze tag (pun intended) becomes an animal prey/ predator game, red rover (with safety adaptations) could demonstrate migration, and hide and seek can demonstrate adaptations.

Third, focus on dramatic play

What if that fort becomes a historical site? The kids become migrating animals, or physically re-enact the water and nutrient cycles. Perhaps you are able to enact the lifestyles of historic peoples that lived in your area or use snowballs as the ammo in part of a historical reenactment. Use your bird brains, your fox stealth, your smart asses (the donkey!) to figure out how animals survive and thrive in the winter.

Fourth, Use snow any way possible!

Weigh it, measure it, melt it, eat it! Count, add, subtract it. Create target games where the numbers are used in oral multiplication tables. Race on it with timed trials. Sled down it and calculate your velocity. Paint in it with food coloring. Build it.

What are some your most successful winter outdoor education lessons?