Build-a-Snowman Winter Playdough Activity

Inside: Looking for a fun winter playdough activity that your preschoolers will love? Try building a snowman. This simple idea is also a great way to strengthen fine motor skills!

Winter is here! And that means adding lots of snow activities to your winter theme. That also means making playdough snowmen. You might remember our love for snowmen, like when we stamped them with bubble wrap, and when we made “snow” covered snowmen. Well, now we’ve made them out of playdough, too! Our toddlers and preschoolers loved this winter playdough activity!

This year we happened to get a bit of snow right before we put together this activity. As you know, it’s always much more meaningful when children have experienced it in real life. So, when they arrived after experiencing some snow, they were so excited to build snowmen!

This is a super easy and fun winter activity.

Build-a-Snowman Winter Playdough Activity

First, you need the playdough.

This is our favorite play dough recipe, but we double this since we have 10-16 children.

2 cups flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons cream of tartar (we buy ours in bulk at our local grocery store)

1/2 cup salt
1 1/2 cups water

Place the water in a pot and bring it to a boil and then add the rest of the ingredients. Cook until the dough thickens and separates from the sides of the pot.

Place the dough on a flat surface and knead with a bit more flour until it is no longer sticky. Place in an airtight container.

Setting up this activity:

We set up our playdough table with the white playdough, rolling pins, snowman stampers, and small pieces to embellish the snowmen. (We used googly eyes, buttons, and colored matchsticks.)

Making the snowmen:

We learned how to roll the playdough in the palms of our hands to make balls and long thin pieces.

At first they looked like this:

And then like this:

And then, they started forming smaller balls to make more defined snowmen.

They were very proud to show off their snowmen!

As we were getting ready to clean everything up, I noticed that one little guy had made a series of snowmen. He said they were a family.

Looking for more winter ideas?

12 Winter Math Ideas for Preschoolers

20 Preschool Winter Break Activities

15 Fun Activities Involving Ice

Snowman Theme Preschool Classroom Lesson Plans 

Use snowmen as inspiration for learning and play with this preschool snowman theme lesson plan set full of hands-on math, reading, and science activities.

• Recommended Book List
• 1-Page Weekly Lesson Plan Grid with Activity Ideas for Whole Group, Literacy, Math, and Science each day
  • Alternate Editable Weekly Grids for 4-day, 3-day, and 2-day programs
• 5 Daily Lesson Plan Sheets with Activity Directions and Materials List
• 2-Page Center Descriptions
• Related Printables

CLICK HERE for more information.