Winter Break Dual Language Sensory Activities

For most families, winter break is about a 16 day break from school. If you are like many other families, you look forward to the extra time with your children and the holidays. I know we do! Mixed in with our family time, we plan a little bit of time to practice our children’s second language skills as well. So we are including our dual language winter sensory activities so other families can blend language building with some fun too!

While we are including lots of different sensory activities, we usually choose only 2 – 3 to try out each year. We try for at least one more independent activity and one family activity for most days of winter break. Then we try to watch or listen to one show, podcast, or movie in our children’s second language each day. For us, our children are learning Spanish, so many of our examples will be specific to Spanish but can easily be adapted to any language your child is learning.

Dual Language Winter Sensory Activities for Kids

Our children love sensory experiences. Just set up a large bin to keep all the materials in or a special spot on your table. We love to set up one of these activities and allow our children to use them over multiple days. Adding in a language component is fairly simple and with our resources, may only take a few minutes to set up the activity.

So many of these sensory bins can also be made in a sensory bottle too. Sensory bottles keep the mess down even more, but make it a little more difficult to hide vocabulary words inside. Instead of searching for words, children search for items, colors, or shapes to name in their second language. Push for even more language by asking your child to use the new word in a sentence.

How Can You Add Language to a Sensory Activity?

There are so many ways to encourage your child to practice their second language during sensory experiences. The easiest way is to ask your child to use the second language when playing. Dual language winter sensory activities are a perfect time to practice new vocabulary specific to winter.

Take a moment to label the items used in the sensory activity in your child’s second language. This can be as simple as writing on each items or making a key to the side of the sensory bin. You can also hide a variety of words in your child’s second language in the bin. We will include a few specific vocabulary words you can use but also any second language vocabulary works as well.

Add specific questions to the sensory bin in your child’s second language. For older children, you can write these on the lid or near the sensory activity. If you have younger children, you can record these on Talking Buttons. These let you record up to 30 seconds, which is more than enough time to ask a question about the sensory experience.

How to Modify for Older Children?

For older children, you can pair the dual language winter sensory activities with writing. As your child plays, or after playing for some time, ask your child to write down as many words, phrases, or sentences as they can to describe their experience. Encourage them to use the specific vocabulary with each sensory bin below.

Challenge your child to write a paragraph describing how they used the sensory bin. Children could also write about ways to change the sensory bin to improve it, what they would like to try tomorrow, or create a silly story using the different objects in the sensory bin.

Include your children when making the sensory bin. Let them help color the rice or pasta, or mix the ingredients, or even decide what to place in the sensory bin. Encourage them to label the items in their second language or even look up the words if they aren’t sure. Teach them to use a translation dictionary or online translator.

Fake Snow Sensory Ideas

We love to make fake snow in our home in the sensory bin. Our favorite recipe is equal parts of baking soda and white hair conditioner. Makes a cold, clean snow that builds well.

Another favorite of ours is to mix instant snow and water. This makes a cold, powdery snow.

To create an even more simple snowy sensory experience, fill your sensory table or tray with cotton balls.

If it happens to snow in your area, real snow makes a wonderful sensory experience. You can take the kids outside to play or bring some snow inside for some fun. Just remember that this snow will melt in a few hours, but usually lasts for a morning or afternoon. We find that wearing mittens or gloves is especially helpful when playing with real snow.

You can leave the bin as is or add in some special items for more fun. We love to add in some winter animals like penguins and polar bears. Winter cookie cutters are always nice to add in too. Our children love the snowman, people/angel, and star cookie cutters especially when playing with snow.

Christmas Tree Sensory Activities

Our children love red, green and white dual language winter sensory activities, especially when we mix in some of their favorite Christmas scents. These can be really easy to make and our older ones actually have so much fun making the sensory bins for our younger children.

Rice is a staple for sensory bins. We use liquid water color to dye the rice red and green. You can also use food coloring mixed with a little white vinegar (we use about 1/2 tsp per cup of rice with a few drops of the food coloring). We place the rice and coloring in a plastic bag, close and shake. Then lay out on parchment paper to dry overnight. Add in a few drops of peppermint for a special scent with the sensory bin.

Another staple in sensory bins is pasta. Any type works, but our kids love rotini because it spirals like a tree. You can dye the pasta the same way as the rice to create red and green noodles (or any other color too). You can also cook the pasta and add the food coloring to the water. Cooked pasta feels much different than the hard boxed pasta and both make a fun sensory table.

A super simple Christmas tree sensory bin is to add red, green and white pom poms into the sensory table.

We love to mix in some lights, ornaments, jingle bells, presents and bows when we make our sensory bins. We usually use the extra or burnt out lights that come with our Christmas lights, ornaments and bows we can buy at the dollar store, and jingle bells and mini presents we snag from Amazon. These make a little more fun when your children are playing and give them even more to discuss while enjoying their experience. Add some funnels and measuring cups for pour too.

Sensory Bins with Candy Canes

Our kids love candy canes and they especially love to make them using all different kinds of materials. Candy Cane dual language winter sensory activities are definitely some of our favorites. We love to use white and red playdough to make candy canes. You can grab some store bought play dough or make your own. If you make your own, add a little peppermint extract for an extra sensory experience. Cookie cutters can add to the candy cane fun! Our kids love the candy cane, Santa, Christmas tree, angel, and stars.

Candy canes make a great water table too! If your children love water tables, add a few candy canes in and watch the water change colors. For a less mess option, place the candy canes or peppermints in a sensory bottle filled with water. Add some marshmallows for added fun.

Make candy cane scented cloud dough. We use 2c of flour with 1/4c of baby oil and a few drops of peppermint extract and red liquid watercolor. If using food coloring, add the red food color to the baby oil before mixing with the flour. Add in some marshmallows and candy canes or peppermints for even more fun.

Make a hot chocolate sensory bin using coffee beans or pinto beans for the hot chocolate. Mix in some marshmallows of any size and candy canes to make the perfect hot cocoa sensory bin.

Sensory Bins and Nature

We love to include a few nature dual language winter sensory activities for our children too. They especially love bringing nature in the home, but you keep these outside too.

Pinecones in the sensory bin can be quite a fun feel. Add a little glitter, cinnamon or jingle bells for an added touch. We also love to provide pipe cleaners, small pom poms, or cotton balls for little hands to wrap around or place in the pinecone openings. For a little more, you can add in some sand, flowers, leaves, or rice as a base for the pinecones.

Another fun ways to use the pinecones is to paint. We use the pinecones as the brushes for our artwork. Another option is to drop the pinecones in a box with some paint and shake or tip the box to move the paint as the pinecones roll around.

For a nature Christmas bin, use some green dried split peas and fresh cranberries. This gives the red and green coloring associated with Christmas and provides some authentic smells and new textures for your little one. You can mix in some lights, presents, bows, ornaments or jingle bells too.

Sensory Painting

Dual language winter sensory activities do not all need to take place in a sensory bin. Instead, try using a box for some winter painting. Ornament Painting is one of our favorites. Pick up a few of the cheap ornaments from the dollar store. You’ll also want a cardboard box that you can recycle when done. Place a piece of paper in the cardboard box, add a few drops of paint, then drop in the ornaments. Now you can roll the ornaments around or close the box and shake. Makes a beautiful painting with just a little Christmas touch without all the mess.

Shaving Cream Painting is another favorite of ours. We love to use red and white or green and red for our paintings. A cardboard box helps with the mess, but you can use a table or cookie sheet too. Spray some shaving cream into the box or on the table, add a few drops of the food coloring and swirl. Then press a piece of paper over the top to make a shaving cream print. Once it dries it has a very unique texture that our kids love!

Cookie Related Sensory Bins

Create a Gingerbread Cookie sensory bin with equal parts corn starch and hair conditioner. We mix in a few drops of brown liquid water color or food coloring and some cinnamon or ginger for a special scent. This makes a very unique squishy dough that kids either love. Add some cookie cutters and a rolling pin to make a true cookie experience.

An oatmeal reindeer sensory bin is a lot of fun too. Simply pour some oats into your sensory bin. Then add some brown and red pom poms for reindeer noses and antlers and googly eyes. If you have some extra time, create a few reindeer antlers to add to the bin too. Adding some brown pipecleaners allows your children to make their own reindeer antlers too! Sprinkle in a little cinnamon for a special scent.

Growing Dual Language Vocabulary Using Sensory Bins

Dual language winter sensory activities are such a great tool for learning for children of all ages. The youngest children love the feeling of all the new textures and the objects that they can explore. Your older children will love the sensory table just as much. They enjoy the textures, being creative, and new scents. Even adults and teenagers often times find a sensory bin relaxing.

We love to use mini jewelry boxes with our sensory bins around Christmas time. Simply place a word inside of the box in your child’s second language and allow your child the opportunity to discover the different words hidden inside the boxes. Add a little more excitement by wrapping a few of the boxes. For more wet sensory bins, you can use small jars with lids to protect the vocabulary words.

If you are looking for easy to print Spanish-English vocabulary words with picture support, don’t miss our early kindergarten vocabulary bundle to get you started. These sets include 9 different categories of vocabulary words that your child will need to be successful in a dual language program. The bundle comes with the vocabulary words presented in three different ways so you will have a variety of sizes to choose from to fit your containers. You can also bury the words directly in many of the dual language winter sensory activities.

Vocabulary Challenge for Your Child’s Language Development

For children ready for a bit more of a language challenge, don’t stop with just reading the vocabulary word. Ask your child to start writing or saying sentences too! You can start by asking your child to use the word in a sentence in their second language. As your child finds more words in the dual language winter sensory activities, they will create additional sentences.

For even more of a challenge, encourage them to try to link two or three different vocabulary words together in a sentence. This will encourage the use of a variety of conjunctions like and, but, so and for your child to put together longer sentences too.

As a final challenge, see if your child can use all the vocabulary words in a story. Encourage them to be as creative as possible when using the vocabulary words. Don’t fret if they need to use English to write sentences in their story, but do encourage as much as possible to be in your child’s second language.

We’d Love to Connect with You!

Looking for even more dual language building activities for winter break? Get more vocabulary ideas in our post on Grouping Vocabulary for Dual Language Learners. Wondering about what research says about language development. Need strategies for helping your child master reading in Spanish and our parent’s guide for beginning reading in Spanish. Want other Winter Break activities for your kids while they learn a second language?

We’d really appreciate if you would take a moment and drop us a comment below. Let us know if you found any of these activities helpful. Have other tips, let us know that too! Want more inspiration and some done for you ideas, subscribe to our newsletter below. We love to send our CreatingButterflies subscribers practical solutions you can use right now and some downloadable freebies from time to time.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.