Winter Solstice Activities and Crafts for Kids

The winter solstice happens on Dec. 21 (as I write this in 2025, anyway) in the Northern Hemisphere, and it’s sort of the real beginning of the holiday season. It marks the beginning of the coldest season, but it’s also the shortest day, with the least amount of sunlight all year. So the solstice is a time of celebration of the returning of the light.

If your family celebrates the solstice or Yule, you may already have some favorite traditions and decorations you use, but whether you’re new to celebrating or not, I hope you’ll find some fun ideas here.

Go for a nature walk (yes, even if it’s cold!) and gather materials to make your own solstice wreath. These are great to hang on the door or have on the table for Christmas or other holiday celebrations. Learn how to do it with this tutorial from Kid Minds. While you’re outside you can do the winter scavenger hunt that is one of the ideas for celebrating solstice with kids from Backwoods Mama. I also love the wet-felted lantern on that page.

Speaking of lanterns, since winter solstice is about the returning of the light and it’s the longest night, making your own lanterns or luminaries is a great activity. I love these simple but pretty paper luminaries from Art Bar; you could try doing this with paper towel tubes, too.

Or make an ice lantern with this tutorial from Little Cooks Reading Books. The post has lots of ideas for things to add to your water before you freeze it, but plain ice is pretty, too (and then you can paint the ice with watercolors!).

There’s also these pretty snowy tree lanterns from Wineberry Wood Press, which are fun for kids and adults to make together. They also have a fun solstice countdown calendar you can make to count the days until your solstice celebration.

The winter solstice is a great time to acknowledge nature and put some food out for the local animals. Run Wild My Child does the classic pinecone seed feeder and dried orange slices, which you can also use as decor inside since they look like the sun.

Do you have any traditions or crafts you like to do for the winter solstice? I’d love to hear about it!

Celebrating the Winter Solstice with Kids [Lesson Plans]

Happy Winter Solstice! [Polymer Clay]

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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