Snow Day Arts & Crafts for kids
Paper, glue, paint, and recycled-material projects with a finished thing to keep.
Part of Snow Day activities and all arts & crafts.
- Ages 3–545 min
Torn-Paper Collage Animal Portraits
Tear colorful paper into pieces and glue them into an animal face.
Adult alongside · Low mess · Printable step card
- Ages 5–875 min
Cardboard Tube Marble Run
Build and decorate a working marble run from cardboard tubes and tape.
Light adult help · Some mess · Printable step card
- Ages 8–1090 min
Woven Paper Wall Hanging
Cut and weave strips of colored and patterned paper into a framed wall piece.
Light adult help · Low mess · Printable step card
Snow Day Arts & Crafts at home
A snow day does not arrive with a plan attached. School is cancelled, the house fills up fast, and by mid-morning the energy needs somewhere to go. Arts and crafts work especially well here because they are long enough to actually fill time — not fifteen minutes and done — and they produce something real at the end, which gives the day a shape and a feeling of accomplishment that screen time does not. These three projects were chosen specifically because they each run at least 45 minutes, accommodate the higher energy of a full unexpected day home, and can tolerate a little noise and movement around them while a child stays focused on the work.
What is in this set
The three snow Day Arts & Crafts activities here run from 45 to 90 minutes — Torn-Paper Collage Animal Portraits is the quickest, Woven Paper Wall Hanging the longest. Between them they cover ages 3–5, ages 5–8 and ages 8–10, and each card below says which. Each one wants an adult at least nearby.
Choosing one
For a three-to-five-year-old who needs you close, start with Torn-Paper Collage Animal Portraits — it is the most contained and the easiest to adapt if attention dips. Cardboard Tube Marble Run suits five-to-eight-year-olds who have energy to burn and want a project with a payoff they can actually play with afterward; it is also the messiest of the three, so lay down newspaper first. Woven Paper Wall Hanging is the right call for an eight-to-ten-year-old who can sustain focus independently for an hour or more and wants a finished piece worth keeping.
Before you start
Across all three projects, the single step most worth doing before you call any child over is the cutting: pre-tear a starter pile of paper for the collage, pre-cut the tube slits for the marble run, and pre-cut the loom slits for the weaving. In every case, that initial preparation is the part most likely to frustrate a child and drain the adult's energy early. Lay down a trash bag or newspaper for the marble run's painting step. The thing that tends to go wrong across all three is running out of material mid-project — collect more tubes, paper, and scraps than you think you need before anyone sits down.
More snow day activities
The other formats available for this theme.