Learn how to make a snow lantern, super cool for winter kids activities, snowball ideas / snowball craft ideas, and snow day ideas. This fire and ice pyramid snowball lantern will become a new favorite wintertime tradition for your family!
How To Make A Snow Lantern With Kids
Snow lanterns make fun winter kid activities and are also great decorative lanterns for winter wonderland activities for school or a winter theme party!
What is a Swedish snow lantern?
A traditional Swedish snow lantern, or Snölykta, is a made of snowballs stacked in a pyramid that is hollow in the center. A light or candle is placed inside of the cone of snowballs and acts a beautiful nature lantern for winter nights.
Get the full snowball lantern instructions printable card below. KEEP SCROLLING for the Scandinavian lanterns tips!
How does a snow lantern work?
Snow ball lanterns work because the snowballs are staggered and stacked in a cylinder or cone shape. This allows the candles placed at the bottom to shine through between the snow balls stacked together and also lights up the snow for a beautiful glow. A lighted snowball lantern is beautiful on a snowy winter evening.
ALSO LEARN HOW TO MAKE ICE LANTERNS!
I think a snowy lantern would be really beautiful for a winter solstice celebration or as a night snow lantern Christmas activity, too! They really are like snowball art sculptures with the glow of the snowball light.
More Snow Activities For Kids
Here’s how to get snowballs for your snow lamp…
How Do You Make Snowballs
If you’ve never made snowballs, you’ll be surprised that making snowballs is really simple. You just gather some snow in your hand and then, using the other hand, cup it over the snow-filled hand and shape the snow into a ball shape.
It’s not necessary to make perfectly round Swedish snowballs.
If you want to make uniform DIY snowballs, kids will have fun using these (especially if you’re wondering how to make a snowball!).
Now, onto how to build a lantern with lighted snowballs for winter snowball activities!
Here’s how to build your own snow lantern. It’s a fun snowball craft for preschoolers and up!
DIY Snowball Lanterns (Swedish Winter Lanterns)
To make your Swedish snowball lantern, you’ll want to clear a small, flat area.
Some people place candles in the circle flat area and light them before they begin and then build the lantern from snowballs around the lit candles.
If you’re making Swedish snowball lanterns for winter project with kids, you may want to wait until the end and then have an adult reach in and light the candles before you place the last few snow balls on top.
You can use tea lights or any candles you have at home for your snowball candles. If you’re using smaller tea light candles, you may need a few to light up snow lantern.
Or, if you don’t want to use open flames, try these remote lights that you can turn off and on without disturbing your snow lanterns. Then, you can light up snowballs even from indoors!
Here’s how to make your DIY snowball decorations / decorative lanterns with snow (see more snow lantern ideas after the directions)…
How To Make A Snow Lantern
Ingredients
- Candles or lights
- Snow
Instructions
- Clear a spot on a flat snow covered surface outdoors on the ground.
- Decide how big you want your snow lantern. (They can be small or large.) It may help to draw a circle in the snow with a stick for the base so kids can see it.
- Place candles or lights on the ground inside the circle.
- Start making snowballs! Depending on the size of your snow lantern, start out by making around 10-20 snowballs.
- Place a layer of snowballs on the circle in the snow (around the lights or candles) to form the lantern base.
- Stack a new circle of snowballs on top of the base circle, staggering them in between the snowballs. Continue stacking snowballs in a circle on top of each other. (The circles will get smaller as you go up and form kind of a pyramid shape.) Stop and make more snowballs, if needed.
- Before you place the last circle and last snow ball on top, light the candles (adults only!) and place the last circle around the top.
- End by placing the last snowball on top in the last open space.
- Enjoy!
YOU’LL ALSO HAVE WINTER FUN WITH: Learning How To Make An Ice Lantern (Get the ice lantern DIY instructions)
Let us know how your lantern in snow turns out!
Thank you.