DIY Snowman Stone Puzzle with Loose Parts

Wether you have a Frozen fan in your house (or classroom) or just looking for a fun and unique snowman activity, I have the perfect DIY nature puzzle for you! Yes, this eco-friendly activity invites children to build snowmen using the rock outlines as a self-correcting guide and the loose parts offer many ways to decorate the snowmen! Do you want to build a snowman?! Read on to see exactly how we created this activity.

This is our fourth nature puzzle and I have so many more in store for you! I will be sharing ways to change them up to keep them fun and interesting.

This nature puzzle is inspired by Olaf from Frozen! With all the plastic toys offered in the stores, I thought this was a great low-waste alternative to the cheap plastic toys we are often bombarded with.

Here’s what you’ll need…

Supplies:

Paper- We use Melissa and Doug easel paper
Stones- We collect ours from the lake. If you don’t have a spot in nature to collect stones, I recommend purchasing from the Dollar Store or craft store.
Marker
Various loose parts to decorate your snowmen. We used: little white rocks, shaped gems, and sticks. You can use whatever you would like!

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RELATED: Looking for another themed stone puzzle?! Check out DIY Spider Stone Puzzle

Here’s What We Did:

Step 1:

Lay out a large piece of white paper. You can tape it down with painters tape if you would like to keep it secure in one spot. I placed the stones, stick arms, little white rocks, and gems mixed together in the bowl. You can choose to separate the rocks and loose parts if you would like.

Step 2:

Place the stones on your paper where you want to outline them. Make sure you leave enough room in between the snowmen for their arms.

If you want to leave out the loose parts, you can always draw the eyes on the smallest stone and little circles for buttons on the middle stones. You can get really creative with the snowmen! Choose whichever version you think would work best for the age group you are working with.

Step 3:

Outline the stones and place them back in the bowl.

Again, if you don’t want to add loose parts, you can draw snowman arms now.

Step 4:

Now for the fun! Invite your child to make the stone snowmen first. They will have fun practicing so many essential skills in a playful and hands-on way. When working on puzzles, children are developing their hand-eye coordination, fine motor, problem solving, cognitive skills and so much more!

The first time we tried a rock puzzle, we spent a lot of time using adjectives to describe the stones. It was great to see my boys using some of those vocabulary words this time around without prompting! “Oh momma, this stone goes here because it looks like a perfect circle!”

Then they added the sticks for the arms. If you are working with older kids, you could practice skip counting the arms by 2 and the stones by 3! Check out how Michelle from @7daysofplay on Instagram incorporated math in a similar snowman stone activity!

Now it was time to add the loose part snowman decorations. My boys pretended the little white rocks were snowflakes and the shape gems were eyes and buttons. We took this opportunity to discuss the different shapes of the gems!

Leo started manipulating the loose parts and made a smiley face on this middle snowman stone:)

Then Sonny made melted snowmen stone stacks. “This is Olaf melting in Frozen!” It’s amazing what kids come up with when they are offered open-ended and inviting materials.

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I hope you give this simple activity a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love it as much as my boys.

∼Tara

Supplies:

This post contains Affiliate links for your convenience.