Snow-cation

There wasn't much to blog about last week.  School was closed the entire week because of snow.  We spent a lot of time cuddling on the couch, watching movies, playing board games and hanging out in our jammies.  It wasn't especially blog-worthy!

Toward the end of the week, I decided that we were done with the snow.  It was time to pull out some Valentine's projects.  Maybe if we start thinking about spring, it will come sooner!

Fortunately, my younger daughters were game.  I had them try out a few of the projects that I had planned for my preschoolers.  First, we pulled out the finger paint.  I cut some hearts out of newsprint.  We got them wet to stick them to the construction paper.  Then they painted over the entire thing, being careful not to push paint under the hearts.  When they were done we peeled the hearts off.  

Next we made some recycled crayons out of our big tub of dulls.  After lots of trial and error, we learned that it worked best when we broke the crayon first, then worked on peeling off the wrappers.  After they were all bare, we broke them into small pieces and filled the mini-muffin tin.  We baked them at 250 for about 20 minutes.  After they cooled and solidified, they came right out of the pan.

In my effort to forget winter, we dumped the magic snow out of our sensory table and filled it with Valentine's rice.  It is so easy to color rice and noodles!  We mixed 2 tablespoons of white vinegar with red food coloring and a drop of flavoring into a baggie. (We used mint, but a friend recommended vanilla.  Any flavoring would work to mask the strong vinegar smell.)  After mixing the liquids, we added 2 cups of rice into the bag.  When the rice was coated, we put it on a cookie sheet to dry.  Then it was time to play!

Our last little bit of Valentine's fun was a quick and easy stamping project.  Paint, cookie cutters, and paper.  They loved it!

So now we're back to school, and hopefully back to blogging and sharing ideas with you!  If you have been off for snow, how did you spend the time with your kids?