Winter Day Craft Fun With Snowbots!

What’s better than robots? If you ask my six year old, not  much… so he was pretty psyched to discover the book Snowbots, from Aaron Reynolds and David Barneda. This was the perfect read for us over the last few weeks, as the wintry weather finally started to arrive in upstate New York, and the snow actually stuck around for a bit. (Basically, he’s been thrilled. I’ve been miserable and missing my flip flops desperately!)

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The book chronicles the snowy day fun of a bunch of colorful robots. It features bright, whimsical illustrations, and uses a huge variety of less common vocabulary to describe their cold, wet adventures… Words like metallic, supersonic, and quick-firing will present some novelty for younger listeners to hear & process, as well as some new challenges for older readers to sound out & comprehend.

Now that all of the Christmas decorations are starting to get packed up again, I thought it might be fun to make some winter themed door hangers inspired by the book… #thebigone’s going to be pretty sad to see his Darth Vader Christmas door knob hanger be stored away until next year, and I thought some cute Snowbots might soften the transition a bit for him.

We used some pre-made craft foam door hangers in shades of blue to mimic the outdoor scenes illustrated in the book. You could easily cut your own out of cardboard, cardstock, or sheets of foam, but this soon after Christmas, I was personally going for easy. While at the craft store, we chose a sparkly white felt to represent the snow in our scenes, but any sort of white paper or fabric would work just as easily… use your imaginations, and ask your kids what looks the most snow like to them!

#thebigone always sees robots as bright & shiny (and really, who can blame him?!), so we gathered an assortment of reflective materials to craft our own Snowbots with. An assortment of foil & metallic scrapbooking papers, as well as some glittery craft foam sheets and tinsel pipe cleaners seemed perfect for our project. You may even have the perfect materials already lying around your home- aluminum foil, maybe, or leftover wrapping paper? After grabbing some scissors and craft glue, we were ready to put together our fun robots.

I liked the idea of tackling robot creation in terms of basic geometric shapes… seeing squares, rectangles, triangles, etc. as smaller parts of the whole machine. This tactic can help kids (and let’s be honest, some less crafty adults) tackle what might otherwise seem like an overwhelming subject to create. It also allows a little math practice, while you identify and talk about the shapes you each see. (And sneaking a bit of math into a fun project, especially during winter break, is always a good thing!)

For older kids with increasingly stronger scissor skills, they can easily cut their own robot pieces out of the assorted materials. Younger children will likely do better using pre-cut pieces, taking the focus for them off of scissor work, and onto both gluing & the artistic task of arranging the pieces. To keep this project super low mess, you can pre-cut the shapes from peel & stick craft foam, so that glue is omitted entirely- you may have the paper backings floating around your craft after for a day or two, but they’re certainly easier clean up than sticky glue! You may even be able to find peel & stick foam shapes already available, making this a super easy set up craft for you.

Our finished Snowbots door decorations are the perfect addition to our home this winter- bright, shiny, and snowy! I’d love to see your versions of these icy robots, so feel free to tag me in photos of your family’s projects on social media. And let me know, when there is enough snow out there, what are your family’s favorite kind of snow scultpures to create together?

Christmas may be over, but our winter fun definitely isn’t… Grab some ideas for excitement here!
Picture books provide such incredible opportunities for learning AND fun! Happy reading!
Keep scrolling for the monthly book club Winter Themed round up!

Standard Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I may receive a commission from purchases you make through the links in this post (at no additional cost to you), which allows me to continue providing free content on the blog. 

Winter themed book club craft round up happens here!