More Games for Winter Days

These winter activities are sure to delight any preschooler when the snow starts to fall.

Snow Snake Races

Build the track the night before, using a narrow shovel, your hands or even cross-country skis. The track should be a few inches lower than the surrounding snow, so that there are banks on either side. It can also be elevated by building an incline at the start. Pack the snow down and spray with a little water. Let it freeze overnight.

Children make their snow snakes using sticks or cut down broom handles, which they decorate to personalize. The object of the race is to see who can slide their snake the farthest.

Note: Create several different tracks - straight lines for mad-dashes, ramps at the end for "snake jumps", tracks with gentle curves, etc.

Fox and Geese

After a snowfall, stomp out a huge circle, making a path about one-person wide. Next stomp out cross-section paths in the circle, creating "pie" slices. Try not to step anywhere but on the paths.

Select one person to be the fox. The remaining players are the geese. The purpose is for the fox to tag a goose, but players must stay on the path at all times. Players can only move single file on the path and cannot pass each other. Geese are safe when in the centre hub, but only one goose can be in the hub at a time.

When the fox tags a goose, or when a goose walks off the path, that player becomes the next fox.

By Rochelle Strauss