Nurture your child’s senses this winter with a creative DIY mini winter sensory garden! It’s an excellent winter kids’ activity and a fun-filled way to develop their fine motor skills and stimulate their senses, while encouraging mindfulness and meditation. With a handful of supplies, you can quickly and easily create this winter sensory tray. Get inspired, get creative, and get the kids involved.
Of all of our posts, our magic zen jar tutorial has been the most shared, affirming that simple ideas for finding calm are more sought after than ever.
If you’re looking for a moment (or two…or three) of zen, to help you and your kiddos chill out, calm your breath, regain focus and find your family bliss, here’s another tool to keep in your arsenal.
In no time at all, with things you can easily find at home, you and your kids can build a tabletop winter sensory garden that doubles as a lesson in meditation and mindfulness.
The feel of the “snow” and needles on fingertips, the smell of fresh pine, the sight of something reflected in a “frozen pond” and the sound of winter…quiet. This peaceful wintry tray provides an opportunity to quietly explore, slowly becoming still with one’s thoughts and surroundings.
This week, we are exploring and celebrating winter-themed Montessori learning. In addition to being a useful meditation prop, this sensory tray is a great introduction to the methods and objectives of Montessori learning.
Much like our winter Montessori practical skill activity collection, this sensory tray encourages so many of the practices and goals of Montessori learning.
Making and playing with a mini winter garden can help children:
- Develop a calm focus while working independently.
- Establish a mind-body connection and learn how to use it to build insight and personal awareness.
- Stimulate creativity.
- Nurture their senses of order, harmony, and balance.
All that and it’s adorable too!
Put a holiday spin on this with our DIY tabletop Christmas tree farm. Or try a different kind of simple, snowy, and sensory-filled playscape with colorful ice sculptures.
To make your own DIY winter sensory tray, you’ll need:
Note: We prefer to shop locally or use what we have at home, but this list contains Woodpeckers Crafts, Etsy, Blick Art Materials, Bookshop.org and/or Amazon affiliate links for reference. As affiliates (and Amazon Associates), we make a small commission on qualifying purchases.*
BASIC SUPPLIES:
- A Tray
- Some natural materials & clippings gathered from outside – twigs, pine branches, pinecones, rocks, etc.
- Baking soda, polyfill, or your favorite “snow” material (I used baking soda for this tray, but have also used this kind of faux snow for our pine tree farm sensory tray – it’s non-toxic & biodegradable!) or you can use white kinetic sand or homemade snow playdough
OPTIONAL SUPPLIES:
- A few drops of diluted, non-toxic food-grade oils (this is a great relaxation aid and so easy to mix into the baking soda)
- A Mirror or tin foil (the perfect frozen pond)
- Pom poms (these became our snowballs)
- A Pipe cleaner (this is what we used to make our rake)
- Playdough or clay (to make a playdough snowman as we did, or…anything!)
How to Make a Winter Sensory Tray – DIY Instructions
Gather the winter sensory tray supplies.
The first step is deciding what materials you want to use. Will you gather nature supplies together outside? Will you use miniature trees and small toys?
Design and arrange your winter sensory tray!
Will you add one or two winter elements, or combine quite a few as I did? Will you set up the tray together or just provide the items and let your little one loose?
The wonderful thing about this activity is that it’s extremely flexible  – there are literally endless options. You’ll find it comes fairly naturally to want to explore a variety of activities, approaches, and layouts.
Mini Winter Garden Tray Sensory Play Activities
1. Pair your little winter sensory gardens with soothing music or sounds.
More than anything, this wintry tray was put together to inspire some self-soothing practice. Just like the season itself, quiet accompanies this activity so well. The tactile qualities of each item provide quite a bit of sensory stimulation on their own, but you can also try turning on some quiet relaxation music or recordings of winter sounds (snow falling, a fire crackling).
2. Use your winter sensory tray as a storytelling prompt.
While arranging or playing in their garden, some kids may enjoy telling you a story or having a calming conversation. If you notice their focus shifting away from exploring the garden, you can begin trying some visualizations…
3. Practice visualizations with your mini winter gardens.
Ask them to close their eyes and imagine walking – the sound of the wind, the crunching of the snow – just letting their mind wander quietly through the garden. You can ask them where they’re going, what they’re seeing, or what they’re feeling, then give them a few minutes to think in silence.
4. Use the mini winter accessories for fine motor skill development.
Beyond meditation and mindful, quiet play our magical mini winter world can be used for finger drawing or as a fun, themed means of practicing sorting with pom-pom “snowballs” of different sizes. Tongs or chopsticks can be used to move or transfer items into the garden (wonderful fine motor skill practice!).
5. Practice basic math concepts like classification, ordering, and spatial sense.
Making a snowman out of playdough or clay is a fun way to learn about sizes (make large, medium, and small-sized balls!) and practice stacking and balance. Even gathering the natural materials you’d like to use can become its own activity and exercise in observation.
6. Learn about winter animal habitats through your mini winter playscapes.
Of course, no winter garden would be complete without a woodland creature or two wandering through! This wintry small world can provide the perfect opportunity for kids to learn about animals who live in chillier climates – their winter habits and habitats. Or add another lovely seasonal forest-building activity to your mini gardens with a paper bag bear den for hibernation learning.
I have to tell you…I STILL have this little setup sitting in the living room by the Christmas tree and have had many quiet moments of fun making trails in the snow and rearranging my winter tableau…winter zen gardens aren’t strictly for kids! I could swear I feel my blood pressure dropping even just revisiting the pictures.
*A note about affiliate links: We strive to use simple, earth-friendly supplies that can be purchased locally whenever we can, but sometimes we find the best universally available options, a rare eco-friendly find, or a niche product only available on Blick Art Materials, Amazon, Etsy, or Woodpeckers Crafts. When included in our supply list, these products are affiliate links, and if you click through to make a purchase we receive a small commission that helps us re-order these supplies!
GETTING READY TO TRY this?
I love seeing all the ways people make these ideas their own! If you're sharing the results of one of our projects, mention or tag me with @barleyandbirch, or share it in the comments of one of our Pinterest project pins.
