Channel the magic of winter with this secret snowflake painting activity. Make this fun winter snowflake craft together and watch as your child is surprised when the secret hidden snowflakes are revealed by the watercolor paints. This is a quick and easy, joint parent-child craft, but it turns out pretty cool. The kids have no idea that snowflakes are going to appear!
Supplies Needed:
white crayon
white paper (I used cardstock)
watercolor paints
paint brush
water cup
How To Make a Secret Snowflake Painting:
Grownup — First, draw snowflakes onto the paper using the white crayon. I know it’s hard to see what you’ve drawn. Try angling the paper toward the light so you can see a slight shimmer reflect on the crayon. Draw snowflakes, snow dots, and spirals all over your paper.
After you have drawn your “secret” snowflakes on the paper, ask your child to paint the paper with watercolors. I told my son we were making a winter picture and suggested that he use blue and purple. He was amazed to see the secret snowflakes appear on the paper as he painted!
Ta-da, now you have your own super cool, secret snowflakes! Let your project dry before showing it off too much. Fortunately watercolors dry pretty quickly 🙂
sparkly craft stick snowflake
Pair this craft with Ezra Jack Keats’ book, The Snowy Day. The book is full of beautiful snowflake illustrations! It might just inspire your child to make more snowflake paintings or make a sparkly craft stick snowflake!
I have always considered myself a fall person, but so many of my favorite books appear on this winter book list! The Snowy Day, The Mitten, and Bear is Awake are among my all-time favorites 🙂 Check your library for these 15 preschool winter stories and others to enjoy together. Maybe you will discover a new favorite!
There are so many fantastic books that take place in the winter time that this list could be endless! I’ve divided up winter into small lists: SNOWMANstories, ICE SKATING stories, SNOW ANIMALS books, list of POLAR BEAR books, and PENGUIN stories recommendations for more ideas.
This is my favorite book!!! Keats captures that childhood joy of playing in the snow. The boy, Peter, puts on his snowsuit and heads out into the beautiful snow that has descended upon his neighborhood. The illustrations are absolutely beautiful and compliment this sweet story. It is full of fun and whimsy. Peter takes some snow home with him in his pocket only to find that it melted while he was taking a bath. Oh no! Is that the last of snow? Not to worry, the snow is waiting for Peter in the morning.
My son loves the “How to Catch” series, and this yeti story is his favorite! In this silly snowy adventure, the kids set a whole bunch of clever traps to catch a yeti. However, the Yeti easily escapes and the traps backfire on the kids with hilarious results. If you look closely at the illustrations, you can find “hidden” members of the yeti’s family watching the kids.
This is a sweet story that teaches kids about how animals spend the winter. As the first snowflake falls on the fox’s nose, fox wonders what he is supposed to do in winter. The other forest animals tell him how they prepare for winter. Some fly south, others store food, and some hibernate. Unfortunately none of these ideas will work for fox. Finally, another fox comes along and shares what foxes do in winter — they dance in the falling snow! With such beautiful illustrations, kids will love looking over the pictures and seeing the two foxes twirling about in the snow.
In this humorous book, Fox does not like winter. His friends hibernate and migrate, leaving him lonely. Fox gets an idea to make new friends out of snow, but they are not as much fun as his old friends. What’s Fox to do? He decides to fight winter! Get ready to laugh as Fox gets a flame thrower and tries to melt winter. Winter fights back and Fox gets covered in snow. Just then, Rabbit appears. Rabbit teaches Fox to appreciate winter and Fox finds that with a friend by his side, everything can be enjoyable.
This is such a cool book! With hardly any words, the reader pieces the story together from the fantastic illustrations and the alphabet letter and corresponding word on each page. In this book, a bear awakens too early ( A = awake) and sets off in search of food. It finds a little girl in a cabin, who, through a series of humorous events, helps bear return to its home and go back to sleep. Zzzzzzz.
Little Owl is so cute! In this Little Owl story, the forest animals are preparing for winter. Some gather and store food, some hibernate, and some stay awake to play in the snow. Soon winter arrives and leaves a blanket of snow in Little Owl’s forest home. Even though Little Owl misses his hibernating friend, hedgehog, he enjoys the snow with his other friends. Preschoolers will love this bold, bright pictures and gentle story.
Froggy is preschool fan-favorite! His books are full of excitement, fun sounds, bright pictures, and struggles that little kids can relate to. In this story, Froggy is supposed to be hibernating for winter, but he wakes up to explore the snow. He has to put on all of his warm clothes, with “zuts” and “zaps” before he is ready to explore. Unfortunately, he keeps forgetting something important and has take all of his clothes on and off over and over again. Just when he thinks he has everything he needs, his mommy yells that he forgot his underwear! Yikes!!! Poor Froggy trudges back inside. By now he is too tired to play outside, so he climbs back into bed and falls asleep. Kids can pretend to get dressed along with Froggy to add to the fun of this book.
This is my favorite Jan Brett book. I love her illustrations and the sense of humor displayed in the pictures. One snowy day, the forest animals discover a mitten that a little boy dropped. One by one, the animals squeeze into the mitten to be cozy and warm. Amazingly, the mitten stretches to accommodate even a big bear! But when a little mouse tickles bear’s nose, bear’s huge sneeze sends all of the animals flying out of the mitten! The mitten soars through the air and the little boy catches his missing mitten and carries it home.
This is a short, rhyming story about playing in the snow. School is canceled due to snow, so the children put on their winter clothes and head to play! They have a blast sledding and having a snowball fight. They come home cold and wet to warm up with some hot chocolate 🙂 This a cute story and preschoolers will enjoy the fun.
Tortoise is just trying to sleep his way through winter, but all of his animal friends are being too loud. The animals are excited about all of the fun winter activities they get to do, like sledding and ice-skating. Their excitement keeps turtle from his slumber, who keeps trying to find the perfect nap spot. When tortoise tries to use a sled as a bed, he accidently takes off down the hill! Tortoise discovers that enjoying winter activities with your friends is a lot of fun!
I love this funny story about a hedgehog who has a stocking land on his head. The stocking sticks to the hedgehog’s spikes and Hedgie can’t get it off. The other animals make fun of Hedgie, who insists that he is actually wearing a hat, not a stocking on his head. By the end, the other animals have stolen the rest of the laundry so that they too can have warm clothes like the hedgehog.
This rhyming, sing-song story follows the pattern of the Ten on the Bed song. The caribou has a sled and soon his nine friends join him for a sled ride. One by one, the animals fall off and they form a giant snowball. The animals race the giant snowball down the hill, losing friends as they go. By the bottom of the hill, only the caribou is left on the sled. Your kiddo will giggle as wolf wipes out and fox flips out of the sled. Caribou is lonely and he invites all of his friends to join for another sled ride!
Every parent who has ever had to bundle their child up for snow play and every child who has worn layer upon layer of clothes will appreciate this story! Told in rhyming text, the child tells the reader about all of the clothes that must be worn just to be able to go outside and play. Clothing gets stuck in zippers; the kid feels too hot! Lots of humor and cute illustrations to keep readers entertained.
In Kevin Henkes’ Winter is Here, preschoolers are introduced to the magic and wonder of the season. In this gentle, soothing story with beautiful illustrations, the reader sees the changes winter brings outside, as well as inside. Colorful clothing, frozen ponds, a cute snowman craft appear. Take a look around and see what winter changes you see. Soon winter fades and spring emerges.
Join Olaf in a game of hide-and-seek in the wintery world of Frozen’s Arendelle. This is a fun interactive book, where the reader gets to “play” with Olaf. Olaf’s joy is contagious as he asks the reader to give him a hug. Olaf runs splat into the book page and bonks his nose. He mistakenly thinks that the reader is playing a game and that he can’t get a hug until the game is over. Olaf suggests Leap Troll and Ring Around the Reindeer before settling on hide-and-seek. All right, no peeking as Olaf hides. Can you find him?
I hope you enjoy these preschool winter stories. My son and the preschoolers at the library’s storytime group really liked all of these books. I joined Amazon’s Affiliate program to try and help cover the costs of this site. If you buy something through one of my links on Amazon, then I get a small percentage of the sale (no extra cost to you). Thank you for your support! Happy reading 🙂
Book Activities
My son and I enjoy reading books together and then making crafts that go along with our stories. Check out my Crafts Page for ideas!
My son really enjoys doing science experiments and making fizz is a favorite of ours! It’s really easy to make and clean up. We decided to make a winter fizz STEM activity by adding blue glitter to experiment. Usually when we make fizz, we like to color the vinegar, but this time we left it plain so that they baking soda stays white like snow. The blue glitter added a fun sparkle that my kiddo loved! We enjoyed doing this together so you will see that we had 2 cups and 2 measuring spoons so that we could take turns adding vinegar to the baking soda.
Winter Fizz STEM Activity
Supplies Needed:
supplies for Winter Fizz STEM Activity
bowl or foil trayÂ
1 box of baking sodaÂ
blue glitter
paint cup (we reused a plastic fruit cup)
white vinegar
Measuring spoon (for spooning the vinegar into the tray) or eyedroppers/pipettes
Prep. Work:
Pour baking soda inside the tray so that the entire bottom is covered
Sprinkle the blue glitter around the tray on top of the baking soda
pour vinegar into the cup(s)
add baking soda and blue glitter
Making the Winter Fizz
Winter Fizz STEM Activity
To make the fizz, spoon some of the vinegar into the tray. Watch as the vinegar bubbles up when it touches the baking soda! The glitter looks awesome as the bubbles rise up 🙂 We thought the fizz looked like snow!
Keep spooning vinegar* into the tray until all of the baking soda is covered in vinegar.
*the larger amount of vinegar that you dump into the tray at a time, the larger your fizz will be !
We love making fizz and incorporating it into our themes! We’ve made superhero fizz, rainbow fizz, pumpkin fizz, and Christmas fizz too! Just add food coloring to the vinegar and use different glitter to make any kind of fizz you want 🙂
I am in love with this sparkly craft stick snowflake craft! It turned out great and it was easy to make. My son is currently obsessed with the color blue, so he was happy to make a “blue” craft. We used an assortment of leftover sequins, stickers, and pieces of confetti, as well as pom-poms, to make the snowflake sparkly and fun. If you don’t have anything to glue on, add some glitter to make your snowflake sparkly.
Color 4 craft sticks. My son colored his dark blue, but I think light blue, pink, or violet snowflakes would be lovely!
Glue 2 craft sticks together to form an X. Glue the other 2 craft sticks together to form another X. Let them dry.
Glue the two Xs together to form your snowflake. Let your snowflake dry.
Now you get to decorate!!! We picked sparkly and metallic decorations for my son’s snowflake. I had some sequins and leftover snowflake confetti that my son glued on. He also picked out different sizes and colored sparkly pom-poms for his snowflake.
My son’s snowflake turned out so awesome. I love it! He did a great job. I can’t wait to make more 🙂 Check out my Winter Crafts page for more fun craft ideas.
I joined Amazon’s Affiliate program to try and help cover the costs of this site. So if you buy something through one of my links on Amazon, then I get a small percentage of the sale (no extra cost to you). Thank you for your support!
Christmas is just around the corner and kids are getting so excited! Help channel that excitement into some fun Christmas crafts. We rounded up our favorite 10 preschool Christmas crafts to share with you.
Preschool Christmas Crafts
10 Preschool Christmas Crafts:
Decoupage Santa Hat: make a Santa hat out of craft sticks and red tissue paper.
Christmas Owl Craft: adorable owls made from empty toilet paper rolls and construction paper.
Christmas Wreath: cute little wreath out of a paper plate that combines painting and coloring for lots of fun.
Candy Cane Reindeer: make a cute and yummy candy reindeer by adding pipe cleaner antlers, googly eyes, and a pom pom nose!
Fingerprint Snowy Tree: draw a barren tree with a marker and then your preschooler can paint on the snow with their fingerprints.
Craft Supplies:
I try to make crafts with supplies I already have at home because I hate having to put a project on hold to run to the store and get supplies. So if anytime you don’t have one of the things I mentioned, feel free to substitute it with something you have at home — there’s no wrong way to craft!
My go-to supplies are: construction paper, craft sticks (popsicle sticks), tissue paper, pompoms, Crayola glitter glue, paper plate, crayons, water color and Crayola Washable Paints, white school glue, and a glue stick. I’ve joined Amazon’s Affiliate program to help cover the costs of my site. So if you click on a product that I have on my site and buy something on Amazon, then I get a small percentage of the sale (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for support! I don’t ever recommend anything that I have not personally used and loved 🙂
Looking to incorporate more STEM education into your preschooler’s activities? Then try this fun Christmas fizz preschool STEM activity! To make this Christmas themed, we used red and green food coloring and we added red and green glitter for sparkly fun. We had a blast watching it bubble up and we loved seeing the red and green glitter sparkle in the bubbles! Play some Christmas music in the background and enjoy this holiday STEM activity together.
CHRISTMAS FIZZ
Supplies Needed:
supplies for Christmas Fizz STEM Activity
bowl or foil tray
1 box of baking soda
red and green glitter
white vinegar
2 paint cups ( we reused plastic fruit cups)
red and green food coloring
Teaspoon (for spooning the vinegar into the tray) or eyedroppers/pipettes
Prepare the Tray:
Pour baking soda inside the tray so that the entire bottom is covered
Sprinkle the red and green glitter around the tray on top of the baking soda
add baking soda and glitter
Prepare the Paint Cups:
pour vinegar in each cup
add a drop of red food coloring to one cup and a drop of green food coloring to the other cup
stir the food coloring until it is well mixed with the vinegar
Making the Christmas Fizz
Christmas Fizz
Christmas Fizz
To make the fizz, spoon some of the colored vinegar into the tray. Watch as the vinegar bubbles up when it touches the baking soda! The glitter looks awesome as the bubbles rise up 🙂
Keep spooning vinegar* into the tray until all of the baking soda is covered in red and green.
*the larger amount of vinegar that you dump into the tray at a time, the larger your fizz will be!
We love making fizz and incorporating it into our learning themes! We’ve made superhero fizz, rainbow fizz, pumpkin fizz, and winter fizz too! Just change the food coloring colors and use different glitter to make any kind of fizz you want 🙂
There are lots of books about Santa, but what about his helpers? Elves get overlooked in books, but we know how important they are! Here are 4 elf picture books to celebrate Santa’s helpers. Check your library for these and other great Christmas books!
One of Santa’s elves is here to administer the Nice List test with the readers. In this fun, interactive books, kids will blow Christmas kisses, name a reindeer, and pass other cute tests. But look out, this elf has a few trick questions! DO NOT fall for the trick questions. This book has a sprinkling of potty humor that makes son giggle. After passing of all of the tests, the reader is awarded with an official Nice List certificate 🙂
My son loves Adam Wallace’s “How to Catch a. . .” series! In this Christmas book, Santa’s helper elf is target by the children. They set all sorts of traps, but with Santa on his side, no one catch this elf! Better luck next Christmas! Kids will giggle at the silliness and enjoy the bright, engaging pictures.
Oliver is a cute little elf with a big heart! He wants to help Santa get ready for Christmas, but every time Oliver tries to help, he ends up causing more problems. Young kids can relate to Oliver and the struggle to help when you are little. Oliver meets a small reindeer and they become friends. Together they realize that they can help in their own way.
This is book is awesome and inspiring 🙂 Santa has an elite team of elves to carry out goodwill missions! I try to impart the message of do kind things for others to my son and this book is a great way for kids to understand that message. The book encourages its readers to also carry out kindness missions with examples of kind, thoughtful acts that kids can do.
I joined Amazon’s Affiliate program to try and help cover the costs of this site. So if you buy something through one of my links on Amazon, then I get a small percentage of the sale (no extra cost to you). Thank you for your support! Happy reading 🙂
Using toilet paper rolls, make this cute Christmas owl craft! This craft is relatively quick and easy. It is definitely a team-work project and my son and I enjoyed enjoyed making our owls together 🙂
Measure your toilet paper roll by laying it on a red or green piece of construction paper and marking how tall your toilet paper roll is. Then wrap the paper around to see the width. Cut your paper out. This is a good opportunity for preschoolers to practice cutting straight lines. I cut our a small diamond shape out of orange paper for the beak. Then I cut two ovals out the third color of construction paper for the wings.
Once your paper is cut, it is time to decorate the wings. We used Crayola Washable Glitter Glue Pens to add sparkle to our wings. I really like this brand because it is easy to wipe up as we tend to be messy when crafting in our house. Let your wings dry. The wait time is the longest part of the craft.
While the wings are drying, glue on the large piece of construction paper. If that paper is not staying down, you can staple it onto the toilet paper roll or tape it.
Turn the front side toward you so that the seam is in the back. Squish the top of the toilet roll down by pinching the front and back and pushing them down toward the opening of the tube. This will make it look like your owl has 2 ears sticking up. Add your googly eyes and glue on your beak. To make the beak on our red owl, we folded the diamond in half so that it looked like the beak was open. On the green owl, we glued on a triangle for a beak.
We gently folded the oval wings vertically in half. Glue one side of the oval to the toilet paper roll body, leaving the other side unattached. This makes it look like the wings are sticking out from the body.
More Crafts!
To make them Christmas owls, we went with a red and green color scheme. By changing the colors of construction paper you use, you can make this owl craft for any occasion. My son already wants us to make a blue owl!
For more Christmas crafts, check out my Winter Crafts Page! There is a toilet paper roll snowman, as well as a sparkly snowflake, Santa hat, fuzzy candy cane, and more.
This candy cane craft is cute and easy for toddlers and preschoolers to make. I loved that I had all of the supplies we needed at home already. Plus, my kiddo loves using glue, so he was excited to make this craft! All-in-all, this craft was a great Christmassy way to fun with my son.
Supplies Needed:
You don’t need very many supplies so you can dive right into crafting! You will need:
-Red construction paper
-Scissors
-Cotton balls (ours were a small size)
-Glue stick
OPTIONAL: my son added googly eyes and drew on a smile with a pen
How To:
Step 1: First cut out a candy cane shape. Mine was nearly as tall as my paper and about 1 1/2 inches wide. You can make yours whatever size you want. I think the wider the candy cane craft is, the easier is is for kids to glue on the cotton balls.
Step 2: Put a line of glue across the candy cane to make your first cotton ball stripe. For younger kiddos, just glue on cotton balls; for older kiddos, stretch the cotton balls out to make the craft more interactive.
Step 3: Repeat step 2 until you have enough white stripes along your candy cane!
Step 4:Optional–add googly eyes and draw on a mouth. My son says adding googly eyes make every craft more fun!
Step 5: Let your candy cane dry before showing it off 😀
More Crafts!
Paper Plate Peppermint: a cute and festive, winter handprint craft to make with your preschooler.
Christmas Cookie Cutter Coloring: a fun way to use cookie cutters without the calories! Trace your cookie cutters like stencils to design paper cookies.
Every year I get really excited about baking and decorating Christmas cookies! My love of Christmas cookies has extended into cookie crafts and now, cookie stories:) Not all of these books are Christmas themed, so you can read about cookies all year long! Check your library for these ten books.
In this storybook-themed adventure in the “How to Catch” series, author, Adam Wallace, brings us a rhyming story of the Gingerbread Man. One day during story time, the Gingerbread Man leaps off the page of his book and takes off through the book store. The kids make a whole bunch of traps to catch him, but the Gingerbread Man’s storybook friends come to his rescue! The Gingerbread Man escapes all of the traps, but notices that the kids are sad that they can’t finish the book. The cookie leaps back onto the page so that everyone can finish the story. Grown-ups will enjoy seeing their childhood book friends come to the Gingerbread Man’s aid.
This book is so funny! Get ready to laugh your way through this updated gingerbread man story, featuring a tough cookie. Cookie claims to be a delicious sugar cookie, but he isn’t sweet and cookie isn’t fast. Cookie taunts Fox, who immediately catches Cookie. Fox tries to take a bite, but hurts his tooth! What a tough cookie! An unlikely friendship forms between the two and Fox sets out to help Cookie be his best cookie-self in this hilarious picture book.
I absolutely love Jan Brett’s books! Her illustrations are fantastic and the gingerbread baby is so cute. In this twist on the classic folktale, a family makes a gingerbread baby who jumps out of the oven and runs through town. One after another, the people and the animals give chase. The boy, however, has a plan. He bakes a gingerbread house and the cookie, looking for a place to hide from everyone, runs inside. Now the gingerbread baby lives safely inside his gingerbread house.
In this non-holiday cookie picture book, an adorable cookie recalls its struggles in school and just not feeling smart. Sometimes we all get distracted, mixed up, and frustrated, even cookies! One day, Cookie gets a school assignment to create something. It could be anything! What should Cookie make? Finally, inspiration strikes and Cookie writes a poem. The class takes turns showing what they created. Each one has a different talent. It is Cookie’s turn to share. All of the other foods love the completely original, Cookie-created poem! Cookie realizes that everyone is good at different things, and just because you aren’t good at something, doesn’t mean that you aren’t a smart cookie.
Lisa Murray’s Gingerbread Man has a whole series of adventures! In this rhyming Christmas book, the Gingerbread Man learns about the spirit of giving. The kids make cards, sing songs, and bake treats for their community. The Gingerbread Man knows just who he wants to make a card for and he sets out with his class to give their gifts. The Gingerbread Man gets separated from his class and his little cookie legs get hurt in the snow. He doesn’t give up and he hobbles up to the shop with his card to give out. Read this book to find out who the Gingerbread Man’s special card is for!
Cookies and pirates together in one sweet Christmas story! A boy and his mom make gingerbread pirate cookies for Santa. The boy’s favorite is Captain Cookie and he takes the captain to his room. After the boy falls asleep, Captain Cookie goes in search of his cookie crew, who he needs to save from being eaten by Santa! Along the way, the cookie discovers Christmas wonders and finally meets Santa himself. Captain Cookie challenges Santa in a daring attempt to save crew. Santa promises not to eat the gingerbread pirates before delivering a bit of his Christmas magic to the cookies. Pirate-obsessed and imaginative kids will enjoy this book and its magical ending!
This book is the southwest version of the famous song. The pictures are awesome and preschoolers will love the sing-songy story. Turns out it was sneaky ants who took the cookies! But don’t worry, every gets a cookie at the end. I’ve read this to the library preschool storytime group many times and they have always enjoyed it. It’s fun to play the Who Stole Cookie game after reading this. My three-year old really liked this book and since it was just the two of us, we set up some stuffed animals to be players in the game with us.
My son loves this series by Mo Willems! The pigeon is in desperate need of some manners and the little duckling is just the one to show the pigeon how to ask nicely for something. The pigeon can’t believe that duckling got a cookie just by asking nicely and saying please. Come along on the pigeon’s hilarious journey to learn to say please and thank you.
This book is a fun read! A boy gives a mouse a cookie, which leads to mouse asking for a glass of milk. After the milk, mouse wants to check his reflection in a mirror to see if he has a milk mustache. On and on it goes until mouse is thirsty again and wants another glass of milk, which makes it think of a cookie! This is a humorous story and helps preschoolers understand sequencing.
This is one of my son’s favorite books. I think we both have it memorized now! This is a super cute book about what foods farm animals like to eat. They are all very predictable except for the cow, who loves cookies! Preschoolers will love the rhyming, the repetition, and the fun sounds. Read this to find out why cow loves cookies so much. Karma Wilson is a very popular author, so your local library will probably have this book
Visit your library and checkout these cookie stories and other great cookie-themed picture books! I’ve joined Amazon’s Affiliate program to try and help cover the costs of this site. So if you buy something through one of my links on Amazon, then I get a small percentage of the sale (no extra cost to you). Thank you for your support! Happy reading 🙂
More Cookie Fun
Find the Differences: My son loves “find the differences” activities and he asked if he could design one. He made this cute gingerbread themed Find the Differences (free downloadable PDF) worksheet. Can you find all 5 differences?
Cookie Cutter Craft: We turned some of our cookie cutters into stencils and made paper Christmas cookies!
