Christmas 2010 will be a white one for millions of parents across the upper Midwest.
For me, it’ll be red and white. All the white has me seeing red.
This weekend, more than a foot of snow fell on the Wisconsin city we call home. In addition to the five-foot tall snow drifts, we are dealing with wind chills in the -25 to -35 range, and subsequent school closings triggered by the inhumane conditions.
For kids, a snow day is cause for celebration; for parents, not so much.
Personally, I’m not a huge hater of the snow day, if it is just that—one day. However, when schools stay closed for an extended amount of time and cabin fever sets in, that’s when I start searching for sanity savers.
Given that I live in the frozen tundra that is Wisconsin, I typically have an arsenal of kid-friendly indoor activities at the ready, though given my child’s gnat-like attention span, I’m lucky if they last the entire snow day.
Some of our favorite indoor snow day activities include:
Holiday Crafts
*Empty your craft closet and put the kids to work creating seasonal decor from inexpensive everyday items, such as:
*Paper plate snowmen or Santa faces
*Paper snowflakes
*Paper bag reindeer puppets
*Popsicle stick sleds
*Mini gingerbread houses made from graham crackers and candy
Snowman Cake
This is a simple activity that can easily be made by kids of all ages with help from an adult.
Use a boxed cake mix to create two round cakes, one about 9-inches in diameter and the other roughly 7 inches. (You can use a snowman-shaped cake pan if you prefer.) Frost the cakes with white frosting, and then cover them with coconut flakes. Lightly pat the coconut into the frosting so it sticks.
To create the face, use upside down Hershey’s kisses as the eyes, M&Ms as the buttons, and a real baby carrot for the nose. You can further embellish the cake with Fruit by the Foot for a scarf and black icing for the boots. In addition, if you are really ambitious or have a bunch of kids to keep busy, you could bake a few small square cakes and have your young helpers decorate them like Christmas gifts to place around the snowman cake.
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