5 Budget-Friendly Winter Activities for Snowed-In Families

Snow days are a welcome opportunity to stay inside and have fun as a family. You can make the most of the situation with a few budget-friendly activities that use your imagination and items you already have on hand. With that in mind, here are five things to do indoors on a snowy day.

1. Indoor Snowball Fight

You can bring the fun of a snowball fight inside without any of the cold or mess. All you need to hold an indoor snowball fight are pieces of paper or clean socks. Though there are multiple ways to hold an indoor snowball fight, here’s one idea for setting up the game.

1. Gather anywhere from two dozen to fifty pieces of paper or balled-up socks to use as snowballs.
2. Divide a room into two sections with one team of players on each side. Make sure to remove any fragile or breakable items from the area you’ll be playing in.
3. Give each team half of the total snowballs. The goal of each team is to have the least number of snowballs on their side at the end of the time period.
4. After five, 10, or 15 minutes, the round is over, and the team with the least snowballs on their side of the room wins. You can play as many rounds as you’d like.

If you’re looking to add more of a challenge to the game, you can consider creating new rules. One way to rev up the game’s difficulty is to incorporate a dodgeball element and make it so that anyone who gets hit with a snowball must sit out until the next round.

2. Baking Bread or Cookies

Nothing can warm you up on a cold day like some freshly baked bread or cookies. First, decide whether you’re in the mood to make something salty or sweet, then gather your ingredients. For either recipe, you’ll need flour, salt, sugar, yeast, oil, eggs, and any additional ingredients that are called for.

If you’re in a savory mood, you can make a simple sandwich bread loaf that’s great for eating fresh out of the oven. If you’d like to make a more complicated bread recipe, why not try your hand at sourdough? If you’re looking for a sweeter recipe, browse through some festive Christmas cookie recipes and find one that uses ingredients you already have.

3. Winter Movie Night

Get your family to snuggle up and relax by having a fun winter movie night. Have you or your children pick out a film with a winter or Christmas theme and invite everyone to gather on the couch with cozy pajamas and blankets. Add even more fun to the night by adding festive treats like peppermint popcorn or a hot chocolate station, where everyone can add tasty extras, like mini marshmallows, sprinkles, or chocolate chips, to their drinks.

4. DIY Indoor Snow

Playing in the snow is endless fun, but did you know you can take part in the same activities inside on a snowy day? If you have younger children, they’ll love the opportunity to make and play with DIY indoor snow. You can make fake snow using any of the following recipes.

• Baking soda and water. Pour baking soda into a bowl and slowly add water one tablespoon at a time. Slowly whisk the ingredients together, and when the mixture is light and powdery like snow, it’s ready.
• Baking soda and shaving cream. Shaving cream is the perfect consistency for making DIY snow. Just mix one part of baking soda with one part of shaving cream and knead the “snow” until it’s combined.
• Shaving cream and cornstarch. If you don’t have baking soda, you can make DIY snow with cornstarch and shaving cream. This recipe makes denser, foamier snow that’s easy to mold.

5. DIY Snow Globes

Why not bring the snow inside and create a DIY snow globe? They can be a great budget-friendly option for holiday gifts, too. Get some water, a small glass or plastic jar, glitter, plastic figurines, and glue, along with glycerin and sequins if you have them.

1. Start by gluing a small figure to the inside of the jar lid. You can use anything from plastic dinosaurs and army men to princesses and tiny animals. Just make sure you use durable glue, like hot glue or rubber cement.
2. Slowly fill the jar with cold water and add glitter or sequins as desired. Adding a few drops of glycerin can really make your snow globe glitter and help the sequins move around more freely in the jar.
3. Screw on the jar lid and give it a shake! If you’re concerned about the jar leaking or have young children who are likely to unscrew the lid, consider applying glue to the threads before screwing the lid on.

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