It's a snow day and school is cancelled! Need some ideas to keep your kids entertained?

"To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake it is necessary to stand out in the cold."

- Aristotle

Living in Vancouver is amazing! It makes sense that the cost of living here is crazy, we have mountains and ocean and plenty of adventuring opportunities. Our winters usually include a lot of rain and a few weeks of cold air. For those of us who love snow, it is a close drive to the North Shore mountains or Whistler. 

The past week has been a bit different. The temperature has been below zero and we have had a few fantastic snowstorms that have caused two snow days IN A ROW! What great news!! It is currently dumping snow as I gaze out the window writing this. 

As I was reflecting on how wonderful it is to have a second weekday off, I wondered if all people felt the same way as I do about snow days. I also wondered how many of my students were out in the snow and how many were sitting inside playing Fortnite. The purpose of this post is to provide some creative options so that young ones do not need to sit in front of a screen all day and can have an entertaining and fun day off school! 

Activity #1 - Build a Quinzee

A quinzee is a snow cave that is easy to build and makes a fantastic shelter if you are every lost overnight on a mountain. 

Materials: 

- Shovel (large and small)

- Snow clothes

- Lots of snow

Instructions: 

1. Make a large pile of snow in the area that you want to build your snow cave. 

2. Once you are finished making it as high as you want it, let it sit for one hour so that the snow can settle and it will be safer to sit inside. 

*If your young one is loving the snow, they could build a snowman or have a snowball fight while they wait. If not, they could go inside and complete activity #2 until the quinzee is ready to be hollowed out. 

3. Using a smaller shovel, start hollowing out an entrance to the quinzee. You literally dig into the bottom/side and then start pulling snow out of the centre of the pile. This is why it is important to let the snow sit for a while. If it doesn't sit, it will fall on top of the person doing the building. 

4. Keep emptying the pile of snow to make the size you want. If you were building this to stay alive, it is best to keep the hollowed out area small so that your body heat can warm it up. 

Activity #2 - Design a Snowflake Watercolour Painting

This painting is fun and relatively quick! You can talk to your young one about what colours they think best represent snow and how all snowflakes are different. Maybe go catch a couple and watch them melt before trying to do this. 

Materials:

- Watercolour paper

- Green painters tape/frog tape

- Watercolour paints

- Oil pastels

- A piece of cardboard or something that the watercolour paper can be taped to

Instructions: 

1. Put the watercolour paper on top of the cardboard. Use the frog tape to stick the paper to the cardboard. It will create a white boarder around the edges of your paper. 

2. Using a white oil pastel, (or another colour if you want!) draw a snowflake in the middle of your page. It should take up a decent amount of space. Also, if you want to add more smaller snowflakes, you can do that as well. 

3. Using a clean brush and water, cover your watercolour paper and snowflake in water. 

4. Prepare your watercolour paints. Select your first colour and paint from the centre of the snowflake to the outside edge of your paper. 

*Remember - watercolour paints will be bright at first. Add more water to lighten/soften the colour. Use as few or many colours as you like. It should look like the colours are coming out of the snowflake. 

Activity #3 - Paint the Snow

If your young one is ready to go back out in the snow, here is an art activity for outside!

Materials:

- Water bottle(s)

- Knife (or something else to poke a hole in plastic with)

- Water

- Food colouring

Instructions: 

1. Find a few old water bottles from your recycling bin and wash them out.

2. Fill them with water and add food colouring to reach the colour you want. 

3. Poke a hole in the lids of the water bottles for the water to spray out of. 

4. Go outside and draw in the snow with the food colouring! 

Activity #4 - Crochet a Hogwarts Scarf

This activity will help your young one with their fine motor skill development. Hopefully you have yarn hanging around your house. If you don't, this might be difficult unless you live close to Michaels or another craft shop. 

My first suggestion would be to sort yourself into your house at Pottermore.com and then make yourself a scarf in your house colours! I'm a Gryffindor, so my scarf is red and gold. Hopefully my simple pattern makes sense.

Materials: 

- Wool

- Hook

- Scissors

- Perhaps now is a good time for a movie - if you're making a HP scarf, perhaps it should be accompanied by your favourite HP movie. 

Instructions: 

1. Select a crochet hook (6mm) and wool

2. Make a chain of 30 stitches

3. Complete 10 rows of single stitch in your main colour (ex. mine is red/burgundy)

4. Switch to your secondary colour, (gold) and complete two rows of single stitch

5. Switch back to your main colour for two rows of single stitch

6. Switch back to your secondary colour for two rows of single stitch

7. Switch back to your main colour and repeat from step 3 as many times as you like before it is long enough. 

If you don't know how to switch colours or tie up loose ends once you are finished, there are probably some youtube tutorials available somewhere to help! This post is just for ideas.

Activity #5 - Create a Tree of Hearts

It is nearly Valentine's Day, so why not make a decoration? This one might be more suitable for girls...and it can be embellished and made as fancy as your crafting supplies allow!

Materials: 

- Sticks (from your backyard or local green space)

- Vase/plant pot

- Glue gun

- Some kind of wool or string (I used hemp)

- Scrapbook paper

- Any other craft supplies, jewels, etc. you want!

Instructions: 

1. Go for a walk to your local green area and find some sticks. They won't all be covered in snow. I found mine yesterday in the snow. 

2. Take them home and inspect them for bugs. Then let them dry. 

3. Find a pot or vase and fill it with decorative rocks. If you don't have those, improvise. You need something to keep the sticks from falling over. Maybe try some Styrofoam? Sand? Crumpled newspaper? You could even use dirt - but that would be difficult to dig for under the snow. It also might be frozen. 

4. Once your sticks are in position, start cutting out hearts and gluing wool to the back to hang them on sticks. 

5. Have fun! Decorate with whatever you have to make it festive. 

Activity #6 - Bake Cookies

Why not spend some time making Valentine's cookies for school on Thursday? Snow Days are a gift of a day to us so why not spread the love and do something nice for another person? Find your favourite recipe and get to it! 

Happy snow day everyone!