In the Meadow We Can Build a Sock Snowman

I got my 2 1/2 year old daughter all ready for winter last week. We bought a snowsuit, a winter coat, and boots. My daughter was so excited. We have already had a few snows, but yesterday it snowed all day long. Today, I was excited to take her out in it and my husband wanted to build a snowman with her. Instead, she woke up with a cough, so we only let her outside for a couple minutes. Since no big snowman was going to happen, we made a sock snowman inside instead.

While it’s no substitute for the real thing, this craft was still a great way to get into the winter spirit. We were able to use leftover socks from my daughter’s lovey’s Halloween costume, so we already had everything we needed.

How to Make a Sock Snowman Craft

Supplies:

• 2 socks – 1 white and 1 whatever color you want
• Rice
• 2 rubber bands
• Paint and painting supplies (optional) 
• Pom-pom (optional)
• Black Sharpie (optional)
• Orange pipe cleaner (optional)
• Buttons (optional)
• Ribbon (optional)

Prep (Painting the Hat):

The only prep is if you decide to paint your own hat. You can completely skip this step by using an already colorful sock for your hat (skip ahead to the creating section). I only had a white sock on hand and knew that my daughter would enjoy painting it. I also think that it gave our sock snowman another fun personal touch.

First, I prepped my painting area by following my suggestions on how to paint with a toddler. Then, my daughter picked our paint. I heavily influenced my daughter towards red and green. To allow my daughter to paint the whole sock at one time, I cut off a section of the foot and placed it over a plastic cup.

Next, I sat back and watched my daughter paint. She has had enough experience from her previous painting crafts, that she knew just what to do. She went back and forth painting red and green all over the sock and somewhat washing her brush between each color. I told her to paint everywhere she saw white, and she took it very seriously. (Do you see Lumpy watching?)

Once the hat was painted, I pushed it to the side to dry while we made the rest of the snowman.

Creating:

To start, we filled our sock with rice to make the snowman shape. To have less of a rice disaster, I poured some rice into a plastic carafe. Then, my daughter poured it from there into the sock. I had my husband hold open the sock for her so that I had a free hand to take a picture.

After filling the bottom with enough rice to make a plump ball, we put a small rubber band around it. My toddler helped me push it down and then I wrapped it around again to make it tighter. Than we poured more rice and did the same thing with another rubber band to make the head. Now that we had a snowman shape, I cut the excess sock off the end. There is no need to cut it off very close to the top rubber band since the hat will cover it up.

Next, it was time to decorate. You probably noticed that I put optional next to a whole bunch of the supplies. That is because a lot of them are for decorating with and what is fun with this craft is you can decorate it however you want. I will tell you what we did and you can do the exact same thing or something completely different.

First, I had my daughter use a Sharpie to draw the eyes and mouth. Then she glued on a tiny piece of orange pipe cleaner for the nose.

After the face was done, we moved on to the scarf. I cut a piece of sheer green ribbon, my daughter wrapped it around the snowman’s neck, and I tied it. Then she glued three buttons on the snowman’s belly.

At this point, the hat was partly dry. My daughter glued a pom pom on the top of it and I took it off the cup to dry the rest of the way.

Once the hat was all the way dry, I rolled the bottom up until it was a good hat height. Then I put it on the snowman.

Did you think we were finished? So did I. But several days later I was looking at our sock snowman while eating breakfast and realized something looked off. I realized that we had completely forgotten to put arms on it. So, right after breakfast, we went outside and got arm resembling sticks from the same tree we had got our gratitude tree branches from a week so ago. To get them to stick we had to use hot glue. I put the hot glue on and my daughter held the sticks in place while the glue hardened. Now our snowman really is done….hopefully.

Conclusion of Our Sock Snowman Craft:

I think that our sock snowman turned out pretty cute. The face is a little weird (is that a mustache?), but that’s what happens when you create with a 2 1/2 year old. I really like the overall concept and this is definitely a craft I will do again once my daughter is a little older. I think that painting the sock for the hat turned out really good and adds a fun touch. Is this a craft you are going to try this Christmas season?