Winter Theme and Centers for Preschoolers

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Today, I am bringing you Winter Theme and Center ideas for your preschoolers. These ideas will turn your classroom or home into a winter wonderland of learning activities, where you can address all domains in a fun and educational way.

There is something magical about Winter! The white landscape and colder weather make me think about sitting in pajamas covered in a soft blanket before a crackling fire, with a hot chocolate cup and an excellent book.

The bad part about it is having to shovel snow, scrape ice from the windshield, and watch not to break yourself something falling on a slippery floor.

Here in Florida, we don’t have to deal with this. It is the same weather all year round. Heat, humidity, and sun. Truth to be told… I hate it! My perfect kind of weather is up in North Carolina’s mountains. You get to see the seasons in their glory but in a mild way. Perfect for me!

Regardless of where you are and what type of weather you are experiencing, Winter is a beautiful season with the best holiday ever, Christmas! It is also an excellent opportunity to engage your children in learning activities with this season in mind. Here are some ideas you can use.

Circle Time

Circle Time is one of the most important parts of your day because it helps you introduce what you have scheduled and sets the mood for the rest of that day. It is also a time when preschoolers can work on their social skills as a large group.

I always start circle time with a song and then continue with a storybook or a short activity. Since I have not written winter songs, I researched where to get some and discovered that teachingmama.org has a collection of beautiful winter songs appropriate for circle time. She also includes a free printable that you can download HERE.

Literacy

Literacy activities can be as simple as reading a story, writing lists, singing, and playing rhyming games. These are some great ones you can use:

Winter Beginning Sounds – This low prep activity will help preschoolers work on their phonemic awareness skills, identifying the names of the pictures in the mats and the beginning sounds corresponding to those names, making up the connection between oral and written language.

Ornaments Letter Match – This activity is great for helping preschoolers develop their concentration, visual discrimination, letter knowledge, one-to-one correspondence, creating sets, eye-hand coordination, and fine motor skills.

Snowflakes Letter Match – Like the previous one, this activity is also great for helping preschoolers develop their concentration, visual discrimination, letter knowledge, one-to-one correspondence, creation of sets, eye-hand coordination, and fine motor skills.

Library Ideas

Gather fiction and non-fiction books about Winter, Christmas, snowmen, snowflakes, winter clothes, and others related to the season, to support the theme. There are tons of beautiful ones that you can use. These books can be found at your local library, on a used bookstore, or Amazon. These are some of my favorites:

What Can You See in Winter? by Sian Smith. Using beautiful photos very simple repeated text, high-frequency and decodable words, and strong photo-to-text matching, this book will teach children about things they can see in winter including typical winter activities and changes in the natural world.

What’s a Season: Winter by Kelly Grettlel. With colorful, rhythmic text, this book will show your kiddos what makes winter so magical and fun.

Curious About Snow by Gina Shaw. With beautiful snowflake photos, this book looks at the science behind snow, the history of record-setting blizzards and snowstorms, and how people have fun in the snow!

The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll. This fun story talks about how Clayton and Desmond join forces to build the biggest snowman ever, for the town’s contest.

Ten Sparkly Snowflakes by Tiger Tales. A cut math book that used woodland animals to show children how the number of snowflakes decreases from 10 to 1 with each turn of the page.

Animals in Winter by Henrietta Bancroft. This book is a little advanced for preschoolers but can help you introduce your kids to basic science ideas as part of discussions about the seasons and animals.

Goodbye Autumn, Hello Winter by Kenard Pak. A brother and sister will take children on a journey as they explore nature and take a stroll through their twinkling town, greeting all the signs of the coming winter.

Science

I love Science! Some teachers get intimidated by it but in reality, it doesn’t have to be complicated, and it’s an important part of any preschool classroom. Young children are naturally observant and curious about the world around them. They are not afraid to pick up a frog or a worm with their bare hands, or jump in muddy puddles (sounds familiar?).

Science offers them many opportunities to do hands-on activities, use scientific vocabulary, record data, and follow the scientific process to communicate results. Some interesting activities are:

Candy Cane Reactions

This is a very easy activity to put together, but very powerful as a learning one for your preschoolers because it will encourage their curiosity, observation, and prediction skills. To put it together you will only need:

Some candy canes.
Some media like water, oil, vinegar, and alcohol.
One glass container for each media.

Present the children with the candy canes and media. Talk about the characteristics of each one, and invite preschoolers to predict what will happen to the candy canes when you place them in the different media. Take dictation on a chart paper.

Invite preschoolers to help you put some candy canes in each container. Then fill out each container with one of the media. The idea is to observe what happens to the candy canes in each media, over hours or days, and compare the results with the notes you took about the children’s predictions.

Snow Study

Bring some snow to your classroom in a container. If you don’t have access to snow, just bring frappe ice.

Have the children observe the snow or ice with magnifying glasses, touch it, and smell it. Invite them to use all their senses and talk about what they observe and experience. Ask them questions to make assumptions and predictions such as:

Why do you think it is cold?
Where does it come from?
How is it formed?
What will happen if we let it in the container?
What will happen if we pour some food coloring on it?

Take dictation of what they tell you and then either give them the right answers and/or do experiments to discover if their assumptions were right, and show them videos to allow them to observe how snowflakes and hail are formed, etc. Below are some interesting ones you can use.

Informational YouTube Videos

There are many YouTube videos that you can present to your students, to allow them to observe natural phenomena that otherwise will be difficult for them to see, such as the characteristics of winter, and how the snowflakes and hail are formed. These are three of those videos that you might find useful for your preschoolers:

Math

Math helps children solve problems, recognize and use shapes, measure and develop their spatial awareness, recognize and copy patterns, and many other important skills. Some of the activities you can do are:

Winter Shadow Matching – This low prep activity is great to help preschoolers develop the visual discrimination skills necessary to identify letters and numbers.

Christmas Counting – These activities are perfect because they are just a matter of printing and going, and are great for strengthening the children’s counting abilities, concentration, number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, and fine motor skills.

Christmas Dot-to-Dot – These too are great activities for strengthening the children’s concentration, number recognition, number sequence, and fine motor skills.

Counting Candy Canes

This activity is easy to prep and fun for preschoolers. You just have to bring different sizes and colors of candy canes and have the children:

Predict how many candy canes of each color there are.
Count how many candy canes and take away.
Create a sorting game by giving them different colors of candy canes to create sets of each color, then add how many of each color they have.
Measure candy canes.
Separate candy canes in small, medium, and large.

Crafts

Crafts are always fun and an excellent resource to help preschoolers develop their creativity and fine motor skills. Some ideas I have for you today are:

Candy Cane Stamping: you just need candy canes and white, light blue, medium blue, and dark blue tempera paint. Have the children unwrap the candy canes, press them against tempera paint in winter colors, and then into a piece of paper, to create a unique artwork.

Christmas Wreath: cut a ring out of a paper plate. Provide children with glue, tissue paper in winter colors, small jingle bells, buttons in winter colors, mini bows, mini ornaments, Christmas silk flowers, and any other type of items you might think of, and let them use whatever they want to decorate their wreaths. You will be surprised by the beautiful creations they will be able to do!

Tissue Paper Winter Suncatchers: cut out two pieces of clear contact paper for each child and small tissue paper squares in winter colors, and place them in a basket. Tape one piece of contact paper to the table sticky side up for each child and place the tissue paper basket in the middle. Have the children stick tissue paper squares in the contact paper. When they finished, cover each creation with the other piece of contact paper. Then use the outline of a candy cane, snowman, Santa Claus, ornament, stocking, and bell to trace on the contact paper with a permanent marker, and cut outside the line. Use a hole puncher to make a hole on the upper end, and put a piece of string. and hang the suncatchers in front of a window, to enjoy the pretty colors.

Music and Movement

Music and Movement are an integral part of any preschool program, and children always love that part of the day. Better yet, is a gross motor and educational activity, because depending on the song, the children learn language and vocabulary, rhythm, rhyming, counting, and sequencing.

There are a lot of songs and poems you can teach your preschoolers. These are some ideas:

Seasonal Songs in Motion by The Learning Station is a fun album to get your preschoolers dancing.

Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall for Preschool and Kindergarten by The Kiboomers, is a pretty collection of songs for all seasons. It includes the song “I’m a Little Snowman” which is a classic one for winter.

Penguin Dance by Jack Hartmann uses a growing pattern to teach left and right, following directions, and listening skills and helps develop gross motor movement skills.

Fine Motor Ideas

Even when many of the above activities cross over and help them develop their fine motor skills, I just wanted to mention a few more hands-on activities will help your little learners develop the little muscles on their hands and fingers, to prepare them for writing. Some ideas are:

Build a Snowman Activity for Preschoolers

Build a Snowman – This is a great activity to kick off the winter season, because it will help preschoolers practice their fine motor skills, and will show you how their cutting skills and spatial awareness are developing.

Playdough snowflakes – children roll white or blue playdough into a flat shape and use a cookie cutter to complete their creations.

Winter art – let them create winter masterpieces using tempera paint, brushes, and paper on the easel, or simply crayons and paper on a table.

Gross Motor Ideas

Even when you don’t necessarily have the opportunity to do all gross motor activities outside because of the weather, there might be some of the following ideas that you can use:

Go on a Nature Walk: you can have your children observe the changes in the landscape, what type of animals they see, how the weather is, what smells they perceive, etc., and then come back inside, have them discuss what they saw and felt, and make a drawing of their observations.

Snowball Catch: have them play catch using white balls.

Play Winter Tag: a simple game that children love, they can use plastic snowflakes to tag their friends instead of their hands.

Block Center

To bring a Winter theme to the block center you just have to add props like a fluffy white carpet or throw, mini snowflakes, polar animals, books about Winter, etc. Let them turn the Block Center into a winter landscape or anything they can come up with. The idea is for them to let their creativity run wild and have fun, for hours of learning while they play.

Cooking

Cooking activities have many benefits for your preschoolers such as:

Practice mathematical operations – measuring and counting ingredients,
Science – talking about how ingredients react when they are mixed, colors, textures, smells,
Social-Emotional – creates a bonding experience between you and your children, and gives the children a sense of accomplishment.

These are some great and easy recipes you can do with your preschoolers:

Red and Green Pinwheel Cookie Recipe – This red and green pinwheel cookie recipe is super simple to make, and children will love their colorful creations. It starts with an easy sugar cookie base and then adds a few extra items.

Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies Recipe – These cookies are also called Peanut Butter Blossoms. These easy-to-make cookies are a classic. There is a soft peanut butter delicious bite, rolled in sugar and crowned with a Hershey’s Kiss.

White Cake Mix Christmas Cookies – Quick and easy to make, these Christmas cookies need only six ingredients.

Decorations

An important part of any celebration or theme is adding decorations, having your classroom look beautiful, and putting everybody in a good and happy mood. Besides, anybody who enters the classroom must be able to see the theme that you are using that week.

Pin It For Later

If you are in a rush and don’t have time to read the post and download the printable but want to save it for later, pin this to your Winter board on Pinterest for later.

Finally, one of my VPK teachers asked me to design some gift tags to put on her presents for her preschoolers, and I want to give them to you as well, as a gift. Please find them on the link below. You just have to type your information, for an immediate download.

I hope this is a great season for you, your family, and your students. Have fun and be safe during this time.

Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.

Love,

P.D. Please let me know if these ideas worked for you, or if you think I need to add or replace something. My goal is to help you in any way I can and I don’t like anything better than to post something that you might find useful. Also, if you used different ideas and want to share them, I would love to post them.