The Best Cold Weather Indoor Activities for Toddlers

Bring the Outdoors Indoors

• It might be too cold for your toddler to go out and play in the snow, but you can still bring a little bit of it inside for some sensory activities. Grab a chilled metal bowl and fill it with clean snow. Let your child touch it and feel the cold sensation and the soft texture of snow. She can do a variety of other activities with the snow as well, like creating miniature snowmen, or painting the snow with a little food coloring and water. You can make some edible snow treats with your toddler as well, such as snow cream. Simply add a little milk, sugar and vanilla extract to the snow for this tasty treat. You can also make snow candy by pouring maple syrup onto the snow.

Cold Weather Learning

• Play simple, educational games with your toddler related to cold winter weather. One idea is to have your toddler identify cold items around the house. You could put out objects such as frozen grapes, ice cubes, cold water, and an object from an unheated garage, or a stone from outside. Build your child's vocabulary by teaching her the words to describe items that are colder than another, such as colder and coldest. Help her understand the difference between cold items and freezing items. Challenge her to see whether she can sort cold items from frozen ones.

Cold Weather Arts and Crafts

• Help your toddler create simple arts and crafts projects related to the cold weather. Make snowman out of cotton balls. Have your toddler glue the cotton balls to blue construction paper in the snowman shape, then glue three buttons onto the torso part. Use small sequins to create the smile, and cut out a tiny triangle for the nose. Give the snowman black sequin eyes. Have your toddler draw two brown stick arms. You can also cut mittens and a scarf to glue to the snowman. For another easy project, show your toddler how to make glitter icicles. Have her draw a thick line of glue across a black sheet of paper. Tilt the paper up so that the glue runs down to look like icicles. Cover the glue icicles with white glitter to complete the look.

Winter Books and Movies

• Curl up with your tot to watch an age-appropriate winter-themed short movie or TV program. Choose something that is no longer than an hour or so because toddlers have short attention spans and will have a hard time sitting for too long. Some short movie programs ideal for tots include "Kipper: Let It Snow," which is 40 minutes long, about a dog and his pals playing in the snow. Another is "Bob the Builder: Snowed Under/The Bobblesberg Winter Games," which is 53-minutes long, about Bob and his construction crew trying to prepare for an Olympic-style competition. You could also read winter-themed books with your toddler, such as "Winter Woes," by Mary Kelly, for kids 3 and older, which tells the humorous story of a little boy and his worries about everything that could go wrong if he goes out to play in the snow.