Simple Winter Woodland

I wanted to create post Christmas a simple winter themed small world activity for my kids to play with at home. We had seen squirrels and rabbits in the garden recently looking for food in the winter months and so I used this as my inspiration for this winter small world idea.

Set Up

I wanted to keep this as simple as possible so I used items that I had already previously used for a winter playdough activity. I used some wooden woodland animals, tissue paper, wood slices, glass pebbles, pom poms and then “hid” a few acorns for the animals to find.

M spotted the acorns straight away and we then discussed how animals in winter find it more difficult to find food. We talked about how we had seen squirrels in the garden looking for food that they had previously buried. They both then set about taking the animals and looking for the acorns.

Play then changed and they both then started to create their own scenes and F in particular enjoyed trying to balance and stack the random loose parts. This winter woodland small world idea was not only nice and simple to set up but was a great opportunity to discuss the natural world around us. Using random loose parts not only meant I did not have to go out but also allowed them then the freedom to use the different loose parts in a new way afterwards.