Winter gross motor activities are a fun way to stay active when children remain indoors. Of course, it is more enjoyable to play outside in the beautiful snow, but often we can pretend to have winter activities indoors and work on improving our gross motor skills. Young children enjoy fun and motivating winter-themed exercises.
Winter gross motor activities can be done at home or in the preschool classroom. Get creative with your space and materials and make it fun for children to partake in an inside winter adventure.
Although most of the winter exercises appear easy, they involve coordinating multiple muscle groups and organizing various senses to complete the task. Let’s get started, move around, and have some winter gross motor fun!
Paper Plate Skating
Materials: Paper plates
Instructions: The child receives a pair of paper plates, aka “skates,” and skate around back and forth or around obstacles. Children need to make sure their skates stay on. In other words, they stay on the paper plates and enjoy the skating experience. Make sure to instruct kids to take long strides and use their arm swings for nimble skating moves.
Crumple and Toss Snowballs
Materials: Recycled paper, any small/medium balls you have, and a tossing target.
Instructions: Crumple recycled paper (great fine motor workout) and toss your snowball at the target. If you have additional balls, use them to practice underhand or overhand throw.
Arctic Seal Slide
Materials: Nothing
Instructions: Children pretend to be arctic seals and use their upper body to move around—excellent upper body workout.
Penguin Waddle
Materials: Nothing
Instructions: Children pretend to waddle like penguins with their arms and legs straight and flexed to the sides. Children can carry an “egg” squeezed between their legs (i.e., balloon, pillow) and shuffle around for an extra challenge.
Polar Bear Walk
Materials: Nothing
Instructions: Children pretend to walk like polar bears on all fours with their bottoms up in the air.
Snowflakes Falling
Materials: Nothing
Instructions: Children pretend to be falling snowflakes. They start with their arm up above the head, with their fingers wiggling and slowly lowering the ground. A lot of different muscle groups working together to coordinate a smooth snowflake falling movement.
Roll like a snowball
Materials: Nothing
Instructions: Children sit on the floor with their knees flexed to the chest and arms wrapped around the knees, rock back and forth like a snowball. Rolling back and forth is a challenging exercise for preschoolers and even older kids. It is a great way to develop core muscles.
Snow Angels
Materials: Nothing
Instructions: Children pretend to make snow angels while lying on their backs. Children move their arms up and down and they move their legs side. Coordinating arm and leg movements simultaneously is a challenging task for young children. Practice makes perfect snow angles.
Jump over a snowflake
Materials: Pretend snowflakes, plastic cups, or pieces of paper.
Instructions: Children practice their jumping skills, jumping over imaginary snowflakes. Whatever your snowflake or maybe a piece of ice. Make sure children keep their feet together and hands on their hips to jump over the winter obstacles.
Conquer Piles of Snow
Materials: Pillows, beanbags, blanket piles,
Instructions: Children pretend to walk and crawl through snow piles and challenge their balancing skills. Be creative with snow obstacles.
Tip: Wear your scarf, hat, and gloves to climb through the snow. Practice without shoes to challenge your balance.
Conclusion
Winter is a fun season for children to experience. Unfortunately, there are a lot of times when we need to stay indoors during winter. When the weather is less than perfect, or we cannot venture outside, we can always practice our gross motor skills indoors. Do not let the wintertime slow your kids down, keep moving!
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Located in Arizona we still can use Adriana’s ideas as part of life. A lot of school districts do with on-line learning and I will use them during break time. Thank you for the very good pictures and instructions and for being positive and enthusiastic!
Thank you, I am so happy you enjoyed the article.
It is actually a nice and helpful piece of info. I’m glad that you just shared this helpful info with us. Please keep us up to date with activities like this. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, I am happy you found this article helpful.