How to Make a Big Snowman (Quickly and Easily)

The kids still talk about our trip to the snow, almost a year ago now.  It was our first visit to the snow with all four children, and you can see how excited they were in these pictures. Experiencing the snow is a novelty for most Australians I expect. We only had one day, and two things on the list to do: toboggan and make a snowman.

After tyring ourselves running up and tobogganing down the play hill at Perisher, we found an area to build our very first family snowman. Left up to me, I would have attempted to build a snowman, as we saw many other families doing, by scraping snow into a pile, like you would a sand castle.  But my husband had other ideas.

Having spent some of his childhood in the long icy winters of Minnesota, he said he still knew a thing or two about building a snowman.  He was a wee bit proud I think. It was an opportunity to share some of his childhood with our kids which was special. Love that.

Step 1

Find an area of fresh snow, deep enough (about 15 cm or so), because this is where you will be rolling the snow ball to make the snowman.  Moist snow works best. Much like building a sand castle, it needs to be moist, but not too dry or too wet.

Step 2

Compact a snowball, about the size of a large grapefruit.

Step 3

Then start by gently rolling the snowball over the fresh snow. It’s amazing how fast it picks up the snow, and grows in size.  You need to make sure, that every so often, you change the direction you are rolling, or it will start looking like a big hale bale rather than a ball.

Step 4

When you’re happy with the size of your first ball, roll it to the site where you want to build the rest of your snowman.

Step 5

Do the same for the other snowballs, making each one a little smaller than the last.  Place gently on top of each other.  A stack of three snowballs is a timeless classic.

Step 6

Now, all that is left to do is decorate the snowman. We used fallen branches from gum tree for the arms, sunglasses for the eyes, a stick for the nose and a drawn in mouth.

You can make snowman of any size with this method. My daughter made this cute snowman doing what her dad taught her.

That day in the snow is now an especially memorable moment in our family life.