This free winter I Spy printable has four different versions so you can pick the correct level of challenge for your child!
A printable I Spy game is the perfect way to keep your kids busy and learning on a cold winter day! These printables are easy, no-prep activities for your kids or classroom, plus they’re fun and educational. It’s a real win-win!
Table of Contents
Benefits of playing I Spy
Playing I Spy with a printable can help your child develop important skills. Some of the benefits of playing I Spy include improving your child’s:
- Visual discrimination
- Counting
- Concentration
- Handwriting and fine motor skills
Because of increased use of technology, children are entering school with worse fine motor skills and weaker fingers. This means they may not be able to write well, cut with scissors properly, or perform other important tasks.
Using games like these I Spy printables can help your child work on their pencil grasp, practice writing numbers, and improve other fine motor and pre-writing skills. For example, you can have your child circle or cross out pictures once they’ve been counted aloud, even if they aren’t writing numbers yet.
The toddler/preschool version of the worksheet is a “count and color” printable. Coloring gives your child the opportunity to practice their pencil (or crayon!) grip and improve finger strength.
How to play winter I Spy
This post includes affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission on purchases made through links at no additional cost to you.
These printables are so easy to use!
Materials needed:
- Your free printables (see below for download links)
- Paper. I recommend using presentation paper or cardstock.
- Laminator or dry erase pockets, optional but makes your printables reusable.
- Pens, pencils, crayons, or markers. I love the Crayola Twistables crayons because they don’t require sharpening and there’s no paper to peel off and eat! (Please tell me it’s not just my child who does that…)
I love printing everything on presentation paper. It’s a heavyweight paper with a special coating that makes images crisp and vibrant. If I’m going to use my color ink, I want everything to look it’s best!
The difference is more obvious in real life, but the mermaid bingo card on the left was printed on presentation paper. The bingo card on the right was printed on regular cardstock. They were printed on the exact same printer on the same day.
I laminate virtually everything with my home laminator. This makes the printables reusable. You may be surprised by how many times your child wants to do the same activity! You can store this winter printable with your seasonal items or in a file folder and pull it out again next year. Laminating the printables also means you can use them for activity centers in a classroom without having to print a jillion copies.
If you don’t want to laminate, you can use dry erase pockets, instead. Dry erase pockets are essentially heavy-duty page protectors. They only downside is that your child may remove the printable from the pouch and write on it, anyway.
Free printable I Spy for winter
These games are free for personal use, including in your own classroom (or with your own scout troop, Sunday school class, etc.).
Please do not redistribute the digital files or printed copies to others for their use. Simply send them to this page so they can download their own copies!
Don’t print the images – they’re low resolution previews that will look horrible if printed. Please use the download links to get the high resolution PDFs from Dropbox. I’ve highlighted each download link with a grey rectangle to help you find it!
Easy winter I spy for toddlers and preschoolers
First we have an easy version of the printable. Each picture is included twice. It’s perfect for toddlers (with assistance) and preschoolers. My daughter loves showing off her ability to count to two!
Download the easy Winter I Spy game here
Winter I Spy – medium
Next there’s a “medium” difficulty I Spy. Each image is included 3-4 times.
Download the medium I Spy for winter here
Difficult winter I Spy printables
People have been asking for a difficult I Spy printable, too, so here it is! To make it even more challenging, don’t let your child circle or cross out pictures they’ve already counted.
Download the difficult winter I Spy here
Winter count & color worksheet
The pictures in the winter count and color worksheet are slightly different. Since it’s for younger children (toddlers with assistance and preschoolers), there are only 8 pictures to find. This also helps make sure the pictures in the puzzle are actually big enough to color!
Download the winter count & color worksheet here
Winter printables and activities
Need more winter printables and activities to keep your kids busy on a cold day?
These polar animal bingo cards are low-prep fun for a cold winter day!
These free printable winter ten frame cards are a fun, easy way to help your child learn how to count.
These free printable snowflake coloring pages are fun and helpful as part of a lesson on the weather.
These free printable winter tracing pages are a no-prep educational activity for preschoolers, pre-k, and kindergarteners.
Toddlers and preschoolers love these free printable winter do a dot marker pages! Use them with duaber style markers, dot stickers, or pompoms.
These snowman templates are perfect for crafts and teh build a snowman cut and color worksheet is great for working on fine motor skills!
This free printable winter bingo is fun for the whole family. Even young children can play along since reading is not required!
These cute winter animals are so much fun for kids to color! Click through for 20+ free printable winter animal coloring sheets for kids.
This free printable word scramble is a fun brain teaser for older children (and adults, too!)
Pick from three levels of difficulty to keep all of your kids busy and learning on a cold winter day.
This picture crossword puzzle is fun and easy for kids! Bonus: the answer key is included.
These free printable winter alphabet matching cards are a fun way to help your child associate uppercase and lowercase letters.
These free printable winter counting cards are in both English and Spanish with numbers 1-10 with cute penguins.
Presencia
This was such a great idea. Having 3 different levels means that I can gradually increase the difficulty level for my students, while increasing their counting skills as well. Please make more themes available.
Thank you for sharing
Natasha
Hello!
I’m so glad you like the printables. I was a classroom teacher before having my daughter so I’m a big fan of differentiated instruction.
I do have a couple of other themes available. This page has two difficulties for Valentine’s Day: https://natashalh.com/valentines-day-i-spy-printable/
There are three difficulties of this nature-themed I spy: https://natashalh.com/printable-nature-activity-pack/
I hope that’s helpful!
Bernadette
Hi,
When I click on the medium ispy printable it pulls up the difficult template.
Natasha
Sorry about that! Thank you for letting me know. The link should be fixed now.
Jamie
I am having the same problem 🙁
Natasha
I’m very sorry. It seems the changes didn’t save when I fixed the link recently. That’s frustrating for everyone! The links *should* be fixed now (I just double checked in the post). Here it is again: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cjdjd29iytsylu6/winter%20i%20spy%20-%20natashalh.com.pdf?dl=1