Winter Activities for Tweens (That They’ll Actually Do)
Winter has a way of slowing everything down. Some of that is welcome. The pace eases, the mornings are quiet, and there’s no guilt in a slow start. But a few weeks in, the slump tends to set in for all of us, and tweens feel it especially. They’re old enough to be bored by the snowman crafts that used to delight them and young enough that handing them a screen for the afternoon doesn’t sit right.
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That in-between stage is exactly the problem with most winter activities for tweens. The ideas you find are either too young or barely activities at all. So this is a different kind of list. Every idea here assumes your tween is capable of more than you might hand a six-year-old, and most of them lean into that growing independence instead of working around it. Pick a few, leave the rest, and let them surprise you.
Get Creative
These are the make-something projects, the kind that fill an afternoon and leave a tween with something to show for it.
No-sew fleece scarf. Cut a strip of fleece about 10 inches wide and 5 feet long. At each short end, snip a fringe about 4 inches deep, making a cut every inch or so. That’s the whole project, and it looks intentional rather than crafty. Let them pick the color and it becomes theirs.
Bird feeders that aren’t the pinecone again. Your tween is past the pinecone-and-peanut-butter stage. Try a hollowed orange half filled with seed and hung with twine, or a simple suet cake pressed into a cookie cutter and chilled until firm. Hang it where they can watch from a window and keep a running tally of who shows up.
Origami. Folding is genuinely satisfying at this age because it rewards precision. Penguins, cranes, and fox heads are all within reach for a patient tween. A double-sided paper kit makes the results look sharp.
Painted snow scenes and rocks. A guided snowman painting is a calm hour with a watercolor set. For something that lasts, have them paint smooth stones as tiny snowmen or winter animals and tuck them along a garden path.
Snow slime. Yes, still. Mix half a cup of clear glue with half a teaspoon of baking soda, stir in a little white or iridescent glitter, then add contact lens solution a tablespoon at a time until the slime pulls away from the bowl. It’s a chemistry lesson wearing a costume.
Cinnamon-sugar snowflakes. Fold a tortilla into quarters and cut shapes the way you would a paper snowflake. Unfold, brush lightly with melted butter, dust with cinnamon sugar, and bake at 350 for 8 to 10 minutes. Tasty, fast, and theirs from start to finish.
Fire Up the Imagination
When the weather keeps everyone inside, a tween’s imagination is the best room in the house.
Build an igloo. With real snow, this is an afternoon. Without it, a large cardboard box, some duct tape, and a willingness to let them figure it out turns into something surprisingly elaborate. The planning is half the fun.
Film a winter documentary. Hand them your phone and a topic. What’s it like to travel to Alaska in January? How does a polar bear survive the cold? They’ll script it, narrate it, and quietly do a pile of research without calling it school.
Throw an out-of-season day. Pick the coldest, grayest day on the calendar and declare it summer. Grass skirts, beach towels, lemonade, the works. Or bring back camping with microwave s’mores and a blanket on the living room floor. The contrast is the whole joke, and tweens are exactly the right age to play along.
Write and illustrate a real book. If your tween likes to write, give them a blank hardcover book to fill. A finished book they made themselves is the kind of thing that ends up on a shelf for years.
Warm Up the Kitchen
Cooking is one of the few “activities” that builds an actual life skill, and a tween is fully capable of running most of a recipe with you nearby rather than over their shoulder. Winter is the season for it.
Make a pot of soup. My Instant Pot Wild Rice and Chicken Soup is a good one to hand off. The chopping, the sautéing, the seasoning at the end: a tween can own most of it, and there’s real pride in setting a meal they made in front of the family on a cold night. It’s hearty, it’s warm, and it comes together in under an hour.
Bake a skillet brownie. When you want a lower-stakes win, my Triple Chocolate Skillet Brownie is hard to beat. One pan, a handful of steps, and a warm dessert to share. There’s a gluten-free option too if you need it. This is the recipe for the reluctant kid who claims they don’t like to cook.
Sneak in Some Learning
The trick at this age is to make the learning the point of the fun, not a tax on it.
Explore the science of winter. Try instant ice: chill a few bottles of purified water in the freezer for about two and a half hours, then pour the still-liquid water over an ice cube and watch it freeze on contact. Talk about why it happens. Freezing-point and crystallization experiments are everywhere in winter if you go looking.
Curl up with the right book. Winter is built for reading, and the right book at this age can take. My Side of the Mountain is a natural fit: it follows a boy who runs away to survive a winter alone in the Catskill Mountains, living off the land and his own resourcefulness. It’s the rare book that makes independence feel earned rather than handed over, which lands well with tweens. I’ve got a free literature unit and nature study to go with it, and if you want the full study, the complete literature guide is in my shop with comprehension, analysis, and answer keys ready to go.
Pull out some winter writing prompts. This is the lowest-effort way to get a tween writing all season, as long as the prompts respect their intelligence. I put together a free set of 30 winter writing prompts built for exactly this age: story starters, sensory description, opinion pieces, and a few quiet reflective ones for the dark days. No worksheets, no busywork.
Free download: 30 Winter Writing Prompts for Tweens. Thirty prompts to get your tween writing this winter, without the fight. Grab the printable below and keep it on the fridge all season.
Play a real game. A good strategy game on a snowy afternoon is connection disguised as fun. Ticket to Ride is an easy one to learn and hard to put down. Pull out whatever your family loves and make it a tradition.
Pick a Few and Let Winter Be Winter
You don’t need all of these. Choose two or three that fit your tween and your week, and let the rest of the season stay slow. The goal isn’t to fill every hour. It’s to give a bored, capable, in-between kid a few good ways to spend a cold afternoon, and to remember that this stretch of winter passes faster than it feels like it will.
Looking for more once the snow melts? Here are some fun spring activities for tweens for next time the seasons turn.
(Originally published February 14, 2021. Last updated June 19, 2026.)
