Welcome to our collection of Winter Learning Fun – a collection of relaxed and fun activities for winter-themed learning plans, snowed in days, or just plan learning fun! For this day, we ran with the reindeer! We read a few playful reindeer books as well as a non-fiction one, watched a few online videos, snacked on some “reindeer fuel”, and played with puzzles! Read on to check out the details!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 But the gist of our day having our kiddos focus on some work books or online learning tools in the early morning, an intro to the day’s theme after they were done, some videos around lunch time, and themed activities (reading time, writing time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments) in the afternoon. Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
WHAT TO WATCH
For our video of the day, we went on a virtual field trip to learn all about real reindeer!
- Brookfield Zoo: Bringing the Zoo To You: Reindeer
- SciShow Kids: 4 Facts About Reindeer
- PBS Kids: Wild Kratts: Not All Deer are Reindeer
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
For our snack of the day, we kept things fairly simple: carrots, carrots, carrots! While reindeer do a number of things that most of us humans don’t (moss, grass, etc), they do also eat carrots! Rather than simply call them carrots, we referred to them as ‘reindeer fuel’ throughout snack time 🙂
READING
Reading is not just an important part of learning, it can also be fun if you pick the right books and theme! For our book of the day, we picked a non-fiction book that described a day in the life of a reindeer. We also read a cute, fiction book about the reindeer who first pulled Santa’s sleigh. Then we asked our kiddos what the most interesting part of the book was for them.
- A Day in the Life of Polar Animals: Reindeer by Katie Marisco
- Dasher by Matt Tavares
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing is a great way to practice both their creative skills as well as their writing and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: REINDEER, ANTLERS, CARROTS, etc
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices.
- If you had a sleigh pulled by reindeer, what would their names be? Why would you give them those names?
CRAFTS
For our craft of the day, we followed a craft by distillata.com: Reindeer Water Bottle Craft. We’ve done this a few times & it’s a cute easy way to dress up your water bottles for winter-themed fun!
We also tied our second craft into our STEM activity! We gave each kid a sheet of cardstock (or a few depending on how artistic they felt that day). We asked them to draw a picture of reindeer or a scene with a reindeer in it. We did warn them that we’d use them later and have to cut them up – just in case… 🙂
STEM ACTIVITY
For our STEM activity, we had a few mini Rudolph puzzles that we picked up from orientaltrading.com. Those were a bit easier to complete – they’re small and the sample pictures are on the boxes.
THEN we had them cut up their reindeer pictures (making sure their pieces were sizable/recognizable enough). We let them create some different shapes instead of just sticking to a grid – this made the puzzle solving more fun 🙂 Once their “puzzles” were ready, we asked them to switch, so they weren’t solving their own. It was a cute way to get them to work together while problem solving!
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our winter fun learning article! If you enjoyed this article, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other Winter Fun & Winter Learning Fun Ideas!
Happy Learning!
