More snow talk! I know, I know! We haven’t had much snow this year, but I am just full of posts about it, huh?
No, I am not trying to rub it in that personally I am not that heartbroken over our lack of snow. I know that it has a lot of good qualities like killing off bugs, helping raise our water tables and a laundry list of other ecological things. But the “southern girl” in me is quietly rejoicing because my body is just not use to being that cold. I call myself southern because I moved to Florida when I was 5 years old and lived there until I was nearly 26 years old, so Florida is home. This “Yankee transplant” is not a fan of snow! Especially not in the large quantities that we got it in our first two winters in Oklahoma! I do like snow the way we got a few weeks ago. Snowed all night, looked all pretty and clean in the morning and by the next day – GONE! Loved it!
So did my kids! Another one the fun things about schooling at home is being able to adjust our schedule to fit what we want (or need) to do! So instead of listening to my kids whine about having to go to school (since our public school district did not close) because they were worried about it being gone by the time they got home, I started digging into the closet for our snow gear. Visualize, if you will, a rain fall of coats, hats, gloves, boots, scarves, and so on coming down in our living room! That activity in itself was a lot of fun and great learning for our 4 year old daughter and 18 month old daycare boy. Color matching, counting, words starting with letter ___, and even some adding and subtracting thrown in there by our 10 year old son.
Then we hit a major snag! Thanks to a major growth spurt, none of our 10 year old’s winter gear fit him. Not even the awesome, bright yellow winter coat that he was just wearing at Thanksgiving, a mere few months ago! Plus I realized that I had given away all of our daughter’s snow stuff from last year, so I had nothing to lend to the daycare babies either. Then my Mommy brain kicked in cause I realized that the wind was pretty crazy and it may not be the best idea to take the kids out, when everyone (including the daycare kids) was just getting over being sick with runny noses, bad coughs, and all those lovely germs we spend most of the winter battling……ok, brakes applied. We cleaned up the fall out of the “winter clothes tornado” and sat down to rethink our strategy. My 10 yearr old busied himself with school work and the little kids decided it was time for a “play dishes tornado” instead, while I worked out how we could enjoy the snow without cold weather gear and without subjecting little ones to the rather crazy wind!
Then it hit me! SNOW PLAY INSIDE! No, I am not crazy. No, I did not pull a “Mr Popper” and shovel snow into the house!
I got out the sand buckets, filled up one for each kid and let them have a blast! We had fun and learned all at the same time! Sure it was very simple stuff like the snow is soft and powdery until it is packed into a ball and then it is hard and can hurt if you catch a snow ball to the face, that it melts when you hold it in your hand very long and as the baby learned it is cold if you eat it! The point is that it was fun. It was a change of pace. It was something we don’t get to do very often, and we didn’t let the crazy weather or getting over being sick ruin our fun!
Activities we do at home do not have to be complicated or cost a lot of fun for the kids to like them. Keep it simple and have a blast. These are the memories your children will have forever!
