7 Winter Solstice Activities

Winter is here! The winter solstice is December 21. In honor of the shortest day of the year, we're giving you seven short activities your preschool students can complete in a jiff. These activities are simple and easy to implement, so you can easily squeeze them into your busy teaching day or send them home with your students over winter break!

Beyond reinforcing fine motor skills, these multisensory lessons also reinforce spelling and early math concepts!

1. Hide a number of small objects (e.g., marbles or paper clips) in dough for children to find. Then, have them roll the dough and take turns hiding items for you or their classmates.
   (Pro tip: Roll-A-Dough Letters^® builds finger strength and hand dexterity while also teaching letter recognition!) Make it more challenging for older students by having them close their eyes and guess the hidden items!
2. Hang up letter cards with clothespins to form words. For older students, test their spelling and vocabulary words and have them hang up missing letters. 
3. Before recycling old magazines or used paper, tear them into various shapes and sizes, such as big and small circles, rectangles, hearts, or even stars. Make a collage.
4. Get ready to celebrate Earth Day and the upcoming warmer spring weather by counting, sorting, and preparing a variety of seeds to plant. Discuss the different plants and flowers the seeds will grow into.
5. Cut up plastic straws into different lengths. (Just like pencils and crayons, make sure the scissors fit children’s smaller hands!) Create patterns before stringing them together.
6. Bake and decorate holiday cookies. Write letters and words in icing on each cookie. 
7. Play our music albums to bring learning to life and get your students moving.