Have fun in childcare! A collection of play ideas to liven up cold days in January
When January comes, many teachers may want to incorporate New Year’s games and activities unique to the cold season.
Traditional games and action-based finger plays offer chances to engage with friends while experiencing Japanese culture.
Here, we introduce winter-specific play ideas such as Oshikura Manju, Fukuwarai, and kite flying.
We’ve picked a variety of activities—from ones that require no preparation to those where you can make the materials together with the children.
These are all activities that warm the body and spread smiles even on cold days.
Be sure to try them in your childcare setting!
Have Fun in Childcare! A Collection of Play Ideas to Liven Up Cold January Days (1–10)
Let’s enjoy New Year’s games!
Let’s set up various stations in the playground so the children can experience New Year’s traditions.
We’ll introduce five activities: rice-cake pounding (mochitsuki), spinning tops (koma), karuta card games, kite flying (takoage), and visiting a shrine to offer prayers.
For mochitsuki, we’ll actually use a mortar and pestle to pound the mochi, while the tops, karuta, kites, and shrine are all handmade.
By making good use of cardboard and milk cartons, you can create remarkably authentic items.
Children can play with the toys you’ve made, or they can take on the challenge of making them themselves.
Enjoy New Year’s experiences suited to the children’s ages.
Fun for adults too! “Fluffy Snow”
This is a fingerplay song where you build a snowman and look for numbers hidden in the lyrics.
It doesn’t include every number from 1 to 9, but there are surprisingly many hidden ones—see how many you can find.
In this fingerplay, the snowman’s eyes are made with mandarins, the nose with a carrot, and the eyebrows with a cucumber.
It’s fun to imagine what the face will look like.
Asking “What would you use to make yours?” will likely get everyone excited.
When it snows, try making the snowman you imagined.
Mochi Glasses & Mochi-Pounding Peta-peta-petan-ko
When making mochi, we use the onomatopoeic word “pettan,” don’t we? In this fingerplay song, you touch your thumb to each of your other fingers in time with that sound to act out pounding mochi.
And what you end up with isn’t a kagami-mochi, but… mochi glasses! They look like they’d really stick to your face, but it seems like a fun way to spark kids’ imaginations about what to make with mochi.
Moving your fingers precisely is trickier than it looks, so start slowly at first.
Once you get the hang of it, try speeding up for a challenge.
Cha-cha-cha of the Snowman
Here’s a hand-play song with a wintery theme of “snow” and “snowmen.” In this song, you first use both hands to show snow falling and piling up.
Then, you touch your fingertips together to make the round shape of a snowman, and finally, you rotate your clenched hands in front of your chest to show a dancing snowman.
It’s short, but it sparks children’s imaginations and teaches them the joy of playing in the snow.
If the part where you clap quickly three times is difficult, slow down the overall tempo and enjoy it at a comfortable speed.
Fukuwarai from a one-year-old!
Here are some craft ideas for making Fukuwarai with construction paper.
Just cut out the parts from the paper, glue them together, and draw patterns with a pen to finish.
With a bit of adult help—such as pre-cutting the pieces—even young children can take part.
Put double-sided tape on the facial features and let the kids enjoy sticking them on while playing Fukuwarai.
The classics are Hyottoko and Okame, but a daruma or the zodiac animal of the year also make great motifs.
Enjoy a winter craft session to your heart’s content, with a playful spirit.
Handmade toys you can play with during the New Year
Try making New Year’s crafts that you can enjoy and play with even after they’re finished, together as a parent-child activity.
You’ll make a spinning top, a kite, and a hanetsuki set (paddle and shuttlecock).
For the top, draw pictures on the sides of a paper cup, cut four evenly spaced slits and flare them open, then attach a plastic bottle cap as the handle.
For the kite, slightly offset and layer two sheets of origami paper and glue them together; attach sparkly tape as the tails to complete the body, then add a lactic-acid drink bottle as the handle and tie on kite string.
For the hanetsuki paddle, use cardboard and disposable chopsticks: cut two paddle-shaped pieces from cardboard, sandwich the chopsticks between them, and glue.
For the shuttlecock, tie a knot in the middle of some raffia (suzuran) tape, press a small ball of tissue onto the knot, and wrap it with origami paper.
New Year Panel Theater
How about celebrating the New Year with a panel theater themed around Oshōgatsu? In this show, set to music and song, you open various places and say “Happy New Year.” You greet all sorts of things—like the sun you see when you open a window, the rice inside a rice cooker, and the milk in the refrigerator.
Children will be excited to find out what appears next, and they’ll naturally learn the important New Year’s greeting.
Perfect for New Year’s events and recreational activities.