Having some winter activities for kids on hand can be great on those snowy or rainy days. Here’s one of our favorites using homemade playdough ~ a snowman factory! Children will have a blast creating all kinds of playdough snowmen!
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I thought the kids would have tons of fun creating their own snowmen out of playdough! At the risk of Theo (who has never seen real snow before) thinking this is what real snowmen are like, I got busy gathering the materials for this fun winter invitation to create! (This post contains affiliate links.)
Snowman Factory with Homemade Playdough
You’ll want to start by making your own homemade playdough. (Here’s our favorite recipe for homemade playdough.) For this activity we left the playdough white and added a bunch on white glitter to the finished dough to make it sparkly!
Setting Up the Snowman Playdough Activity
After making the playdough, I gathered materials that could be used to decorate our snowmen. I found some google eyes in my crafting supplies. I also found some ribbon that I cut into small strips to use as scarves. And of course our snowmen would need arms, so Theo and I went hunting for twigs in our backyard and added our findings to the supplies.
While Theo was napping and Lucy was at school, I set up our playdough and materials onto a small table.
I created a Snowman Factory sign and hung it on the wall to bring our snowman factory to life! (Although this is definitely not necessary, it did add to the fun! Here’s a link to print out your own free Snowman Factory Sign!)
I also made my own snowman and placed him right near the supplies to serve as inspiration for the kids.
Playing with the Snowman Factory
Once Theo was up and Lucy got home from school, we were ready to begin creating!
Lucy began by rolling her balls to create her snowman, while Theo just went right for adding materials to his lump of snow dough!
Later Theo asked me to help him roll balls, so we created a snowman together for him to decorate. Here’s his finished snowman!
And Lucy was very proud of her playdough snowman too!
Later she decided to add some ribbon. Instead of using it as a scarf like I did, she used hers to decorate the bottom of her snowman.
The kids had a blast making their snowmen at the snowman factory! I’m sure we’ll be doing this winter activity many more times in the future!
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Veens @ Our Ordinary Life says
January 26, 2014 at 10:32 pmAwesome and simple! We will be doing this today after reading Snowman, by Richard briggs
Chelsey says
January 27, 2014 at 6:34 amI love how you’re connecting it to literature! I need to check that one out!
Bella@artclubblog says
January 27, 2014 at 10:44 amThey’re adorable. Love them!
jackie says
January 29, 2014 at 4:35 pmOh my. Lucy’s snowman might just be the cutest snowman ever.
Jill says
February 2, 2014 at 7:54 pmWhat an adorable idea!
Thank you for stopping by the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop this week. We hope to see you drop by our neck of the woods next week!
Lisa says
February 3, 2014 at 1:23 pmThank you so much for this idea! We tried it today because my little girl was sick and needed a fun activity. I posted about it on my blog (and linked to your site). Thank you so much for helping our morning be FUN!
Chelsey says
February 3, 2014 at 1:38 pmYour snowmen turned out absolutely adorable!! Hope your little one feels better soon! 🙂
Sarah says
November 17, 2014 at 6:23 pmI love this! We are having Snow Week this week since we got our first flurries of the season (and more in the forecast). We did something similar, but I would have never thought to make it a station like this. Adding this to my Snow Play Pinterest board 🙂
Alana - eSpectacularKids says
November 29, 2014 at 6:02 amThese are so cute! And I love the idea of calling this a snowman factory! Lucy’s snowman is adorable! Pinned…
katie warren says
December 2, 2014 at 2:39 pmlove this. we are having trouble getting the items to stay in playdough. did you just push it in or did you glue?
Chelsey says
December 2, 2014 at 4:41 pmI’m sorry you’re having trouble, Katie. We just pushed out items into the playdough, and they stayed without a problem. Are you using the homemade playdough?
Kari Johnson says
December 2, 2014 at 3:07 pmGreat idea! I am going to be using this for my daughter’s Frozen themed Birthday party with a “do you want to build a snowman” sign!
Chelsey says
December 2, 2014 at 4:42 pmI LOVE that idea, Kari!
kitchenish says
January 14, 2015 at 7:25 amThat’s next weeks craft sorted then! So lovely to find this space and thank you for making everything so easily available.
Pinkoddy says
November 21, 2016 at 3:14 amWhat an absolutely adorable idea.
Kristina says
January 21, 2018 at 8:31 pmI’d love to make these awesome snowmen with my kinder class. How do you keep the balls stuck together so they don’t fall apart?
Chelsey says
January 22, 2018 at 8:55 pmHi Kristina! It’s such a fun activity. The homemade playdough is so soft that they stick pretty well. If you’d rather buy playdough, we had success with the playdough in this mini snowman factory. (It’s listed in the materials section.)