Ideas for Fun Things to do in Winter with Kids

Winters can feel so long, and cold, and sometimes you just need a fresh idea to help lift everyone's spirits. 

Striking the right balance between fun, safety, excitement, novelty, and promoting an active lifestyle, can be a challenge. Some days, especially in the long, dark, cold winter months, everyone can feel like not doing anything, they're tired, whiney maybe a little bit, and the pull toward screen-time is strong, and rightfully hard to resist. 

Here's an idea though, that will tick all kinds of boxes in winterizing a positive experience with your kids. You can shovel up a whole bunch of snow into a big pile, and make a sliding ramp! If you have a deck and backyard, use them to create a nice slope. smooth it out and create the track by having your kids repeatedly slide down on any sled, saucer, or snow-skate. 

The kids will get a kick out of building something "new" using only the snow that has fallen on the ground all around you, it has a sort of "fort build" vibe, (without all the unnecessary risk of snow structures collapsing on someone), you will get a ton of exercise, and so will the kids, as they slide down and walk back up over and over again. 

Once you have the basic snow mound built, keep adding more to it over the days and weeks, each time it snows, make it a little cooler, pat the snow down firm and make it slippery, shape it, add some berms, a banked wall, curves and turns! If you're really set on increasing the speed (if you have teenagers at home) you can use a hose and water to spray down the slide a couple nights in January and you'll end up with more of a backyard luge. At this point, you better be breaking out the safety gear, helmets, minimum. 

Get the kids involved in the building process, it will teach them how to build cool things out of snow and get their imaginations going, as well as yours, and all while fostering team work within your family, good times, fun, sledding, and snow. What more could you ask for? 

Now, go have some fun!