Snow
My daughter adores playdough and cooking so last week we made some simple white playdough and added snowflakes ( that promptly melted of course – duh! Add after it cools…) and then had fun playing pretend with some forest animals. This is about as simple as it gets but there are so many wonderful lesson possibilities packed in this simple play.
First we made the playdough. The recipe we used is my favorite .
Something I do with my daughter ( or the toddlers I taught when my own kids were only imaginary) is to play Simon Says before doing someting where I may have to say ” Don’t touch!” a lot. Instead of turning this activity into a negative one when I need her to not touch I simply say ” Simon says touch your nose!” As it turned out I didn’t even have to use this but we still had fun with our pre playdough making game.
She helped me mix the dry ingredients, 
I kneaded the dough while it was too hot for her to touch and gave her some extra flour to explore on the counter. I slipped in some glitter too. 
This playdough is best after it’s chilled so we made it before nap time. Then after nap time it was ready to be played with.
I love these animal toys. They leave real footprints. We sat across the playroom table from each other and just started making prints. 
We looked at them, at which were bigger than the others and how many we could make from one side of the playdough to the other. 
Soon a storyline emerged the raccoon was saving the other animals from a “Snow bump” <– which is 2 year old speak for a snow bank. It was hilarious to watch her narrate a whole complex story line including some negotiation during the various rescues. 
At this time of year with so much sparkle and wow and rush it’s a blessing to sit and be and take things slow and easy with a toddler . We’ve played this exact activity over and over and each time felt calm and connected after. Something I know most all of us can use right now.
Not everyone gets snow. Not everyone that gets it likes to take their kids out in it. I came across a neat recipe for “snow” on Pinterest. {By the way, if you are not on Pinterest you should be! Allie’s stuff is all over the place around there, too. 
} You can find the original post about it here on Flights of Whimsy. She calls it cloud dough, I call it snow.
I made half of the recommended amount she posted. So for my version you will need:
- 4 cups of flour
- 1/2 cup of baby oil
Yes, baby oil. Your room is going to fill with the sweetest little smell and take you back to milk breath (without the sleepless nights, of course).
You and your child can count out the scoops it takes to equal 4 cups. Go ahead and let them dump it in.
Now measure out 1/2 cup of baby oil. Your child can easily pour this right on the mountain of flour.
First my daughter stirred with a spatula. Then she mixed it with her hands because it will clump a little. It is very easy to break up and continue mixing, though.
The texture is so nice. If your children have played with Moon Dough, it is very similar. It is light and fluffy. The scent is very relaxing. This is a fantastic sensory project. We mixed ours in a bowl, but moved it to a bin to play.
It molds easily. We used small bundt cake pans to make mounds and igloos. But the favorite was snowballs, which we threw into the mixing bowl to watch them shatter.
The dust from this does initially stick to your hands, but it brushes off remarkably easy.
Kim is a contributing writer for No Time For Flash Cards, a mom to a toddler, a preschooler, and a foster parent, too. She juggles her day by trying out fun activities and crafts with the kids. After all, she is just a big kid herself. See what she has been up to over at Mom Tried It.
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Just because you haven’t gotten any snow doesn’t mean your kids can’t play with it! We are lucky enough to have a train table that my dad made ( he’s been hacking Ikea since before it was hip) and this week we took some time to play with pretend snow . This is a wonderful multi- age sensory activity and worked great for my 5 year old son and 18 month old daughter, they each explored and played learning different things but having the same amount of fun.
- Gather your materials. We used our train table , extra trains and some cotton balls. If you don’t have a train table grab a bath mat, large shallow bin or just a coffee table and set up some trains or trucks then add in the “snow”.
- Start by being a little goofy and pretending to be clouds that are snowing .
Give the kids the cotton balls and let them decide where the snow goes. I talked to my son about weather, asked him to look outside and tell me if he thought it would snow today in our yard. For my daughter we focused on the color white and the word “soft” feeling the soft cotton balls in our hands and on our faces. 
- Play.
This is where some kids and many parents ( and even teachers) clam up. Now what? Here are some things we did that were fun. 
- My son pretended to be delivering snow from one end of the train table to the other and we counted the snow as we loaded up the train, and then the pile when we dropped it off.
- My daughter had a ball putting the snow into the little train house , through the windows. Hello, fine motor and hand eye coordination practice!
- We made a blizzard.
- We pretended to be the wind and blowed the snow.
- And more play.
What I loved so much about this was that it made the train table feel new again and we played with it and the snow on and off for days.
Books About Trains
Freight Train 
Tracks
Terrific Trains 
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You know that stage when everything gets thrown off tables? Bins get dumped? Nativity scenes get wiped out in a single visit from Baby-zilla? Yeah we are knee deep in that right now. It’s fun. This is a really simple classic craft but with a few tricks you can save yourself cleaning up gobs of glue from the floor, your baby’s mouth or hair. As you can see she loved making it and points to it and asks me to hold her up to touch it in the window daily.
- Gather your materials. You will need some cotton balls, glue, a dish, a paint brush ( pretty wide like an inch or so) and some construction paper. I used 2 pieces one to glue the cotton balls onto and one to use as a backing to make it strong enough to hang it up.
- Start by pouring some white glue in a small dish.
- Paint the glue onto the paper in the shape of a snowflake.
- Add kiddo and cotton balls.
- Because the glue is so thin the cotton balls stick but if they pick it back up there won’t be a ton of glue on it. I rotated the paper as she filled up each arm of the snowflake.
- Lable the textures as they explore and make the snowflake- soft, sticky glue , rough ( or smooth) paper.
- Let dry and cut around the snowflake and glue onto the 2nd page if you need some extra strength. Hang up where your little one can see their awesome creation.
Books About Snow
Stella, Queen of the Snow
The Biggest Snowman Ever
Pop over to my other blog Crafitivity Corner on FamilyEducation.com to see our take on the classic popsicle stick snowflakes.
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Making snowflakes isn’t a new craft. I love to try different ways of doing traditional activities. When Iwas young my mom and I would make snowflakes like this. So I had to do this with my son.
You will just need paper, hole punch and scissors.
Fold the paper into a triangle.
Give your child the hole punch and the triangles. Just let them punch away.
You will need to make sure that you don’t fold the paper too much or you may encounter this…
Cole made random punches on the first snowflake, but as he started the second one I asked if he coulduse the hole punch to make a hole that was a line. He looked at me funny for a second, then you could see the light bulb go off. He really got into making clusters and lines.
The end result was a window full of beautiful snowflakes. Now I have passed down this activity to the next generation and I guess we have a new tradition in our house.
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Kim is a contributing writer for No Time For Flash Cards, a mom to a toddler, a preschooler, and a foster parent, too. She juggles her day by trying out fun activities and crafts with the kids. After all, she is just a big kid herself. See what she has been up to over at Mom Tried It.3 Comments »
