If you’re lucky enough not to live in one of the freezing cold places right now, you can still take part in lots of fun with snow and ice!
Here’s a list of ten ways to make the day magical, warmer style for warmer climates. And here’s a little round-up of online snowy fun. Help the kids make some snowmen, “cut” some snowflakes and more. 
Filed under activities
Happy Monday! I hope you’re staying warm in your little corner of the world. We have some crazy temperatures here lately (even for Minnesota!). I’m hoping it gets above 0 today. How’s that for a crazy wish?
Cold, snow or not, here’s a few ways to make some memories with your kids this week….
1. Make watercolor snowballs. Just bring in a pan of snow and give the kids some watercolor paints and paintbrushes. They can pack the snow into snowballs and then paint them. Store them in a bucket in the freezer until you’re ready to return them to the wild. 
You can decorate the yard with them or the kids can toss them, but let the kids know they should toss at targets like trees and not people since they freeze a little hard.
2. Go sledding inside! Get out a big towel and drag the kids around the kitchen floor. Kids can pull each other around, too.
3. Make a “gingerbread house” for the birds and squirrels. Get together some graham crackers, peanut butter or sunbutter and a variety of bird seeds and then assemble like a regular house with peanut butter as the icing/glue. Take a picture of your masterpiece and then leave it where it’s visible from inside so you can watch to see who visits.
4. If you’ve got snow where you live, head to one of the spots where the snowplows dump it off to play. It makes for instant mountain ranges!
5. Get glow in the dark paint and help the kids write secret messages and pictures on their ceilings.
6. Use kitchen gadgets to make supper fanciful. For instance, use a cookie press to pipe out mashed potato stars.
7. Make giant ice suncatchers. Here’s the easy instructions.
8. Make up a couple dozen fortunes and stash them in cereal boxes, snacks, the cookie jar, etc. Make some especially silly (Beware of odd rabbits today. You will have a monkey on your head….) and some sappy (Your mama loves you more than peanut butter cups. I’m proud of you…). Slip some in drawers and leave some for your sweetie, too.
9. Take advantage of the cold and do some cold weather science experiments. Vaporize hot water in the air, blow frozen bubbles, experiment with salt and water on colored ice, and more.
10. Start a pride jar. Every time you’re proud of your child, write the reason on a slip of paper and put it in a pretty jar. Encourage the kids to peek in their jars!
And with that, my pretties, I’m off to do the magical job of catching up on laundry! Perhaps with a whimsical side of kitchen cleaning… And a bit of hugs and kisses and crafts and silliness with some marvelous little people scurrying about.
Have a magical week!
Filed under Ways to make today magical
Got snow? Here’s a delightful way to use it!
Wouldn’t it be fun to sneak outside tonight and do this to the family car? Or even all the cars in the parking lot?!
Happy Sunday!
Filed under happy stuff
Happy Monday! I hope you’re warm and cozy in your little corner of the world. We got snowed in for the first time in a very long time this past weekend and it was a little bit delightful. My boys spent most of the day outside building a snow fort and throwing snowballs, and even 12 year-old Anna was out making snow angels. Victoria got some gorgeous pictures of it all, and Fiona just stayed inside where it was nice and toasty. Alex brought her a little bowl of snow to play with, but she decided she didn’t care for it at all. We also made lots of holiday treats and started on our billions of kid-made Christmas cards, which we’d better get moving on or they’ll be Valentines cards.
Here’s a few ways to make a little magic with your kiddos this week…
1. Got snow? Bring a big tub of it inside to play with. Add matchbox cars, sand toys or colored water and eyedroppers. (Tip: I use a big under-the-bed storage box for the snow and put lots of towels down underneath it to contain the melting mess.)
2. Make a paper chain of happy memories and accomplishments from the past year.
3. Make a snowball target! I love this idea from Nurture Store: “Draw a chalk target on an outside wall, line up some snowballs and shoot to score. Award different points for hitting different areas and keep tally with a score chart. Lots of adding up practice.”
3. Leave ice wreaths as colorful surprises for your favorite decorated houses. Freeze one ice wreath for each member of the family (put water in a bundt cake pan and add berries, sprigs of pine and/or food coloring and colored ice cubes and freeze). Tie a note around it, thanking folks for making the world more magical. Let each family member leave a wreath on the lawn of their favorite decorated house.
4. Build a snow dragon or a snow house.
5. Take the kids sledding inside. Have them sit on bath towels and pull them around the kitchen or down the hall.
6. Put on the happiest music you can find and dress up really silly to clean the house together. Wear tiaras and aprons, superman capes and so on. Have fun and be silly!
7. Make gingerbread houses. Here’s plans to make real ones, with lots of recipes and tips. Here’s advice from a seasoned gingerbread house decorator on how to make it fun for kids and how to host a decorating party, plus a basic recipe.
And Mary Engelbreit has plans to make darling permanent ones from recycled materials and craft supplies.
8. Let your little ones help make a magical holiday scene with this interactive Christmas card from Ashland University. They can click to make it snow, build a snowman, decorate with lights, hear a choir and more.
9. Make some treats together. Here’s a round-up of whimsical, healthy (-ish!) ones to balance out a bit of the junk of this time of year.
10. Find a few minutes to do something really nice for yourself. Buy yourself a couple of truffles at the check-out and go enjoy them on the porch swing. Take a relaxing bath with a magazine. Call a friend who makes you feel fabulous. You get the idea! Extra credit if you come back and tell me what you did!
You can also check out this list of 50 free (or almost free) ways to make the holidays magical for children.
And with that, my dears, I’m off do the magical task of cleaning my living room — and maybe kissing on some little people while I’m at it. Have a magical week!
Filed under Ways to make today magical
I’m not sure why winter is getting to me
so much this year.
Maybe because we’ve had
or maybe it’s just an odd year.
It’s been bitterly cold here –
too cold to even venture out most days–
so today I seized the tropical temperatures
of 30 degrees
and hauled the kids outside
like it or not.
Alex is not always a fan of time outside
And the others were not wild about the idea either
but soon snowballs were flying
and forts were being build like mad.
And then everybody was having fun
and I was the one wishing we could
just go inside already.
And okay, I guess I can see a little fun
in all this cold and white.
After all, what fun would spring be
if it was easy to come by?
no matter what type you’re blessed with this week.
But if you happen to live someplace warm and sunny
please enjoy it a little extra for me!
Happy Thursday!
Filed under the little stuff
We got a wee bit of snow around these parts recently.
I used the opportunity to have a bit of snow fun at the dining room table.
I had my faithful assistant, Victoria, go get bowls full of fresh snow and fill an under-the-bed storage container with it.
Then I put it on the table with an assortment of little cars and a bulldozer for Alex to do a version of Lonni’s shaving cream snow plow idea from the silly assignment day.
He plowed for a while but his hands got too cold, so we moved on.
First I packed down the snow and gave him a big paintbrush, a jar of water (right in the tub, so spills wouldn’t matter) and some watercolor paints. He painted the snow for a bit, but it was a bit tricky. So we moved on.
I put out a muffin tin of water and added primary colors to three of them, and then we made all different colors in the cups. I gave Jack, Victoria and Alex all pipettes (like tiny medicine droppers, I get them in bulk from a science surplus store for science and art fun!) and they squeezed colors to their hearts’ contents.
It was a colorful, artistic, crazy bunch of fun.
Even I got into the act!
I highly recommend it next time you have a bit of the white stuff to deal with. If you don’t have any snow, try mixing up anything white in a similar container and dropping colored water on it. Dry rice, pale sand, shaving cream… Lots of things would be fun to experiment with!
In my book, any activity that involves pipettes and colored water is a good idea.
Filed under activities
We got our first white stuff of the year this weekend, whether we were ready or not. The kids had a fabulous time having snowball fights and playing with it, though you really can’t tell from this picture of Alex! Victoria took it, and apparently his siblings forgot to find him a hat, poor boy!
It generally takes a while for kids to ever tire of good old fashioned playing in the snow, but if your kids are looking for some new things to do with it, here’s 10…
Now, who’s up for some cocoa?
Filed under activities, crafts
Okay, it wasn’t really Antarctica, but it sure seemed like it!
Sometimes you need a little sunshine, a change of scenery and a delightful child or two to put your insides right again.
I was feeling pretty horrible the other day because of the recent child abuse tragedy. I wrote articles and researched more than I felt I could bear and then I hist post for the last time of the afternoon and asked the kids who wanted to go on a walk with me.
Two fabulous girls said yes and off we went.
Anna brought a walking stick that she collected at Lake Superior last fall. During the whole trip, she kept a running dialog about its magical properties and an imaginary world she made up as we went.
It drove Victoria crazy.
Finally, we got to the end of the world. Or the end of the street, anyway, which ends in a cornfield. It also happens to be where the snowplows have pushed all the nearby snow, creating a pretty cool place!
Anna used her trusty stick to climb the side of it and triumphantly surveyed her domain.
Victoria is never one to take the easy way, so she decided to run up the side of it.
There was a lot of falling down.
She even got this close. It’s very hard to grab onto snow!
Then finally, triumph!
Sort of.
Once the girls were finally on solid ground, they talked me into climbing up and joining them. What another world it was! The girls raced and ran and explored and we had a blast.
(See how the girls are standing right on top of the snow? It is actually pretty deep but they are light on their feet and didn’t usually sink in, unlike their mama! Note to self: eat less chocolate!)
Then we climbed back over and slid down into the real world again. Even me.
I believe we have to do all we can to make the world a better place. But I also believe we have to play and imagine and take time out to go explore Antarctica sometimes.
I also believe in lots of hot cocoa.
Filed under happy stuff
I know those of you in sunshine states are sick of hearing about snow, but when you have this much of it you tend to find a lot of uses for it! Here’s what we did today…
Just go grab a pan of snow, pack it up into some snowballs and paint! Store them in a bucket in the freezer or outside and then go have the most colorful snowball fight ever. I recommend aiming for trees and houses, as frozen snowballs can get pretty solid.
Or you could have so much fun painting them that you let the rest all melt.
Guess we’ll have to do the snowball fight part tomorrow.
Since we have plenty of the white stuff outside and our fun plans for the day were canceled, I figured today was a perfect day for snow painting. It was! Those of us brave enough to venture into the cold left messages and designs for passers-by, and then we brought tubs inside to play with.
This kept all four kids happy and two year-old Alex happily played at the table with his snow for over an hour. We had to keep refilling it, but lucky for us there’s always plenty more.
Filed under activities, crafts
