There are many winter art activities that you can do with kids that are very creative. The standard winter crafts for kids in a traditional early childhood or preschool classroom would probably be a snowman arts and crafts. There are various snowman crafts ideas that are shown on the web, almost all are what I call copycat arts and crafts.

Teachers and parents seem to gravitate towards snowman crafts ideas because it is a concrete example of what winter is. There is however, no need to make a sample craft and then have children copy the sample. What you need to do as I’ve shown in other posts, is give the children  materials that are suggestive of the scene you want them to make and they will create according to their own age levels.

In the picture above there are four different winter art projects.

1. The one on the upper left is basically a printing activity using black paper and white paint. The children were given black paper (dark blue works well too). They were then given white paint and some objects to use to stamp on the paper.If you write on top of the picture in nice manuscript lettering “winter” or “This is my winter project”, it is suggestive enough for it to be a really nice winter art project.
2. The second one below the stamping project is basically just another painting activity. The teacher in this case gave the children round white paper to simulate snowballs, and white, black and grey paint. She then beautifully framed it on a black circle of oak tag. It is amazing how beautiful children’s artwork looks when framed properly.
3. The third winter art project is a snowmen collage 
4. The fourth is a torn paper collage 

Snowmen collages

In these collages the children get to choose the materials they want to use for their snowman from the materials supplied. I always give materials that are suggestive of the scene I want them to make as I mentioned before and then as you see below different ages create differently. If you believe that children should create as they are developmentally ready to do so then you will have no problem with some of the messier looking collages.

For winter collages I give either a black or a dark blue background. I then cut out a number of different size circles from white construction paper. Alongside the circles are as you can see, some buttons, q tips, cotton squares, some other small shapes of colored construction paper.I arrange the materials in a pleasing setup in plates or in styrofoam trays. In this case the children were given chalk as well to enhance or add to their pictures after they finished pasting.

The first picture you see here was obviously a child who knew what a snowman was and attempted very successfully to make a real snowman picture.

The next three pictures were done by younger children who were not ready to make any kind of representational pictures. The beauty of these kind of snowman crafts projects are that by giving the children the materials like circles their pictures still have a semblance of a snow picture. This is great for teachers who feel constrained in doing progressive art because they are afraid of what the parents will say. This way it has a semblance of a winter crafts projects and if they write on top “Snowman Collage” it can look like a piece of modern art.

How sad it is when an adult can’t allow the children to grow into their own creativity and higher developmental level by pushing copycat crafts on them

Other winter art projects for kids

Many of the winter art activities in a progressive art program do not have to be of a representational sort like the collages are. Just using white paint or chalk or on dark papers gives that winter art feel and there are many to choose from. You can also give the children Styrofoam balls, buttons. toothpicks, pipe cleaner and other suggestive materials for them to make 3d winter projects.

Some of the easiest winter crafts for preschoolers is giving them torn paper collages. Below is a display of a class’s torn paper winter collages and I will explain exactly how they did it.

We usually start off torn paper collages by giving the children two pieces of construction paper. One to use as background and one to rip. The children are only allowed to rip and can’t use scissors. When they are younger their collages may look like the white on black one above. However, the older they get (I think the children from the winter torn paper collages were between 5-6 years old) the more sophisticated their art work becomes as you can see from those gorgeous winter torn paper collages above.

The winter crafts projects above give you an idea of the many winter art project ideas you can do without resorting to the boring, copycat, snowmen, snowflakes and other winter crafts you will find all over the web.

Below are just some of the items you can use that are mostly white to help the children make white, snow scenes. Of course,  you can add small touches of color as well. Styrofoam Balls ,   Coffee Filters – Quilt Squares,   Classic Cotton Balls,   SOLID GLOSS WHITE Gift Wrapping Paper,   Chalk Sticks.

These type of collage crafts activities can be done with other seasons as well. Just check out fall craft  projects to see what can be done.

If you like these projects please share them and let me know if you tried them and how they went.