Winter Wonderland of Fun
By Shelly Radic

Cold weather may keep the party indoors, but an indoor winter wonderland of fun allows older preschoolers to stay warm while celebrating a friend’s winter birthday. (These activities are designed for children three years and older.)

Duration
1 ˝- 2 hours

Invitations
Write party information on a paper snowflake. Place in an envelope with snowflake confetti.
Decorations
Hang a clear plastic painter’s cloth filled with white balloons and snowflake confetti across the ceiling. Spread a white painter’s cloth across the floor. Scatter white paper snowflakes over the cloth and tape to walls. Cover any furniture with white sheets.

Food
Snow cones and snowman cake. (Cut snowman shape from a sheet cake. Frost with white icing and add candy facial features and buttons. Add a chocolate covered graham cracker top hat and a fruit roll-up scarf.)

Activities

• Snowman Craft. Provide each guest with a large snowman cut from poster board and some white glue on a plate. Cover the table with 2”x2” squares of white tissue paper. Help guests glue crunched squares onto their snowmen. Add construction paper facial features, hat and scarf. Label with child’s name and hang on the walls around the room.
• Snow Castle Creations. Provide each child with about 36 sugar cubes and a heavy duty paper plate. Encourage children to build a snow castle with their sugar cubes.
• Snow Fall. Divide the guests into two teams. Mark a line in the middle of the room, asking one team to stand on each side of the line. Give each guest a white balloon. The object is to keep balloons on your opponent’s side of the line. Stop every one or two minutes to see which team has the fewest balloons on their side of the line.
• Marshmallow Toss. Divide the guests into two or more teams. Give each team a bag of mini marshmallows. Place large bowls three to five feet from each team. The object is to see which team can toss the most marshmallows in the bowl in one minute.
• Windy Snowflakes. Give each child a four-inch tissue paper snowflake. Challenge children to blow their snowflakes across the floor. No hands allowed!
• Search and Rescue. Line preschoolers around the room. Give each child a stack of white copy paper. At the count of three, have guests wad the paper into snowballs and throw into the middle of the room. After all the paper has been transformed into a carpet of snowballs, ask guests to turn their faces to the wall while one guest hides an ice cube in the paper snowballs. Once the ice cube is hidden, guests turn around and look for the ice cube. Whoever finds the ice cube gets to hide it next. (Have several ice cubes for this game as they melt quickly.)
• Cold Potato. Ask children to sit in a circle. Give one child a sandwich bag of crushed ice. While some music plays, children pass the bag around the circle. When the music stops, the guest holding the cold potato moves to the center of the circle for the next round. (Have five or six “cold potatoes" available in case the bag opens and ice spills out. This is part of the fun.)
• Snow Plow. At the end of the party, untie the painter’s cloth from the ceiling, allowing balloons to fall on guests. Then, give each guest an unopened brown lunch bag and an open brown grocery bag. Challenge them to see how quickly they can “plow” all the balloon and paper snow in the room into their big bags.

Favors
Snow globe, cereal treat snowman, Otter Pops (in liquid form to freeze and enjoy at home)