How To Make Winter Feel Magical For Your Kids
Winter is, well and truly, a magical time of year. Though it’s sometimes difficult to see through the lens of sludgy floors, pitch-black work commutes, plummeting temperatures and astronomical energy bills, there is an indisputable charm to the colder months – and a charm you should absolutely be encouraging your children to see too.
There’s no reason winter can’t be a comprehensively wonderful time of year for your family, even if you might need to put a little elbow grease into making it so. If you’re struggling for inspiration or impetus, let the following tips, from cosy indoor activities to outdoor fun, guide your thinking on how to make winter really feel like magic for your kids (and, by extension, for you).
Embrace Seasonal Traditions
My first tip is that you meet the season where it is, rather than forcing some contrived fun by other means; let the spirit of the season guide you, and you’ll find your activity-planning far, far easier. Christmas is the dominating tradition in the winter months, but there’s also Bonfire Night to draw inspiration from!
In November, lean into bonfires, roasting foods over open flames, baking treats with seasonal flavours
(pumpkin spice may be an American transplant, but it is absolutely a delicious one!); in December, you can pivot to ‘crafternoons’ making festive decorations. Also, when you’re putting this little itinerary together, let your children participate in planning too! adds a sense of ownership and fun to familiar traditions.
Get Outside For Active Play
Just because it’s cold doesn’t mean you need to stay indoors and wrapped up. Sometimes, a little briskness can be good for the constitution – besides which, there is so much magic in the outdoors during the winter. Frosty walks through a public park, visits to a frozen lake, sledding down your nearest snow-banked hill; all these and more can get kids active while enabling them to engage in their surroundings. This is also a golden opportunity to interrupt that inevitable rise in screen time…
Plan A Special Winter Trip
Nothing about winter says you have to stay local, either. If you’ve the funds, even a short break somewhere new can turn an ordinary winter into an extraordinary experience. A very international weekend of winter sports could be the lifechanging experience your household’s been waiting for; Andorra ski holidays are accessible for kids and also very accessibly priced, offering gentle slopes and gentle prices in tandem – not to mention plenty of opportunities for cosy mountain downtime.
Encourage Creative Play At Home
All this activity is bound to be exhausting, of course, so there’s no shame in planning some structured downtime to keep that winter spirit alive. There’s nothing like a good board game to fire up your children (albeit for better or for worse) – and a good scavenger hunt could be just the ticket to get everyone out of your hair long enough for a quiet tipple of your own…
