Snow Much Fun!

I have this thing about winter. Mostly, I absolutely despise it. But for the month of December, and the month of December ONLY, I actually kinda like it! It's new! It's exciting! The holidays are upon us! And my winter coat still feels cozy instead of cumbersome! Last Friday I decided to embrace the one lasting good thing about winter-- playing in the snow! (Please note: I hate the snow and wish it would just stay July forever. But bringing my daughters outside with the neighborhood kids on a solid, no-pressure-to-drive-in-it snow day IS sort of enjoyable.) So, despite my true feelings, I was able to muster up enthusiasm--quite a bit actually--for an exciting, snow-themed program.

Snow Much Fun!, for ages 2-5, was, well, snow much fun. It consisted of 3 parts:

1. A book. Specifically, The Jacket I Wear In the Snow by Shirley Neitzel (an oldie but a goodie!). If you're not familiar with it, this book uses lots of repetitive words and pictures to explain all of the bundling that goes in to getting ready for a day in the snow. And it replaces certain words with pictures. For example the word "jacket" is always a picture of a jacket. The word "zipper" is always a picture of a zipper. It's good for little ones because, theoretically, they can chime in as they recognize the pictures. Each page builds on another item that the main character has to wear to go outside. In my head, I imagined the kids chiming in each time one of these repetitive pictures presented itself. I definitely thought there would be a lot of kids yelling "mittens!" and "socks!" But in real life, I mostly just read it straight through and was lucky if they chimed in for just the last word on each page, "snow." That was fine though. It held most of the kids' attention, even that of a couple of two-year-olds.

2. A mommy & me craft. I decided on snowflake tape resist watercolor paintings. Basically, for this,  mom/dad/caregiver puts down painters tape in the shape of simple snowflakes and then the kids can watercolor over the whole sheet however they want. Then, later, when the tape is pulled up, it looks like a snowy sky-- stolen from Little Bins for Little Hands, thank you.

Here are a few picture of kids working on their craft:

And here are a few finished products (minus the ripping off of the painters tape):

3. Sensory play. This was the part of the program that I was the most excited about. It was a chance for the kids to play in homemade snow. The snow wasn't made with the kids, but rather ahead of time for the kids. There are a lot of homemade snow recipes floating around out there on the ol' Internet, but the one I used today is one that I used once before a few years ago in a program called "Snowmen For Everyone." It's made with only baking soda and white conditioner. I found a few different recipes online with slightly different ratios of each of these items, but I wound up working out a super easy one:

Two 1-lb boxes of baking soda + 1 cup of conditioner

Last time I made this snow, I wound up doing a ton of measuring and portioning and it made a huge mess and took forever. This time, I figured out this shortcut and it was super quick and easy. 2 boxes. 1 cup. Mix. Done. You wind up with something the consistency of dense, wet snow. It's like the kind that's good for making a snowman and that you hate to clean off your car. We even tossed it in the refrigerator for 45-minutes before using it so it was cold like snow! In the future, if I ever do this program again, I would do 4 boxes of baking soda and 2 cups of conditioner in each bin. But today I used 2 boxes and 1 cup and it really worked out just fine. There wasn't a ton, but there was enough. I added a few plastic toy animals, matchbox cars, and plastic spoons to each bin, and--viola!--donezo! Fun snow to play with inside!

What worked least: I'll say the book worked least, but not because it was a bad book or even because it just wasn't a success. It was, in fact, probably about as successful as reading to 2-4 year-olds can be! But compared to the craft and the homemade snow, I'd call the book the least exciting part of the program. That's ok! Something has to be.

What worked best: Is it not obvious? The snow! SNOW MUCH FUN.