10 Ways To Enjoy The Outdoors In Winter

Even though we've talked about ways to beat cabin fever, sometimes you just have to bundle up and head outside. After the jump you'll find a list of 10 ways to have a little fun (without sticking your tongue to a flag pole) outdoors in during the long winter months.

All of these ideas are bound to keep your little ones tied up for a solid half hour... make that an hour if you include the time it takes to get everyone bundled up. Make sure to finish things off with a warm cup of cocoa!

Create A Snow Palace: Even though it's cold outside, it's tolerable if you're building a structure as super COOL as these. Just add 20 drops of food coloring to any pail of water, freeze overnight and then tap gently to remove (you can grease the vessel if you wish, or drop into warm water for a second). Stack them up and make the ULTIMATE snowball fort (if you can't tell we're really quite smitten with the idea!

Build An Obstacle Course: Even though it's cold, there aren't many kids who won't jump at the chance to have a race, or live up to a challenge—especially if there's remedial prizes involved! Head outdoors and use what you have or mound up snow to make ramps, tilts and turns around your street, park or even backyard. Use patio furniture and play equipment or tote along a spray bottle with food coloring and water inside. It's perfect to mark a starting/finish line on the go!

Create A Bird Watching Station: Even if it's just too cold to head outside (no matter how well you're bundled) try setting up a nature station near a window so kids can chill out and watch the squirrels and birds alike have a winter snack. Maybe encourage them to draw birds they see, or make a bird coloring page for smaller ones to color in while they observe.

Make Suet Feeders: Making suet feeders isn't as difficult as you might think. Simply melt lard and pour over birdseed and other nuts and berries, just make sure the birds don't eat better than you do!

Make A Winter Sun Catcher: The one thing you can count on is the cold during the winter months. Fill a bread pan with fruit slices, berries and foliage for a winter wonderland sun catcher!

Make sure you swing over to DIY Life to check out the other 5 things on the list. Don't forget to tote your camera along and send us a few shots of your winter-time fun.

(via: DIY Life)
(Image: Flickr member Beverly & Pack and CoCreatr licensed for use by Creative Commons, Danny Lipford, Family Fun, )

Comments (9)

The colored ice almost makes me miss the snow. I wish I had thought of that as a kid.

#1 only works if you have 200 pails lying around or 100's of below-freezing nights so you can build your fort 1 pail per day.
#4 I remember my Grandmother keeping some in her pantry on the farm but where might one pick a jug of lard these days?!

#1 isn't that hard! If you have a couple of kids, you likely have a few pails. We have about four. Let's say you fill them all up every night for two weeks. That's close to sixty bricks! Not that big of a deal, especially if you live somewhere like Montreal (we do), where it's a looooooooong winter. I'm actually running out to my back porch right after I post this to start this project!

We've done colored water in spray bottles. Extra egg dye at Easter is fun to use on snow too.

abbygraykit - You can find it in a box just like butter or a large tub, usually in the Hispanic section of your local grocer.

when i was little my dad and i used to fill some squirt guns with water and food coloring and go hunting for icicles to color. near our house there was a mountain side that had been blown (i guess?) away to make space for a road, and every year huge icicles would form. we'd spend a lot of time decorating them!

you could also do this to snow if there aren't any icicles :)

we made colored ice in shallow containers. They make pretty ornaments for a tree outside. [put the string in the water, and a drop of paint]

You can find suet in the meat/pork section and it comes in a little square. They usually make it like this for this purpose alone. Just roll it into bird seed and your good to go.

I love the idea of decorating snow/ice with food color in a water gun!

Much easier than buying dozens of buckets for #1 or spending every night for two weeks making ice bricks as puella suggests. Ugh.

The water guns would only need a couple minutes of prep time rather than weeks. Thanks for the great suggestion!