New Year's Eve Family Interview

I never really enjoyed New Year's Eve as a younger person, but a few years ago we found a way to make it a fun family holiday, and since then I've enjoyed it much more! Every year we have our own special tradition on New Year's Eve involving a series of easy, at home activities and treats. Each activity or treat is hidden within a paper bag. You can read more about our New Year's Eve Bags for the Whole Family here.

Last year, one of our activities involved a quick family interview. It became an instant hit with everyone, even Daddy. We liked it enough that this year I've created a new, cuter printable version that we can use again and share with others!

Mail "Winter" to A Friend

We recently learned about the 100 Acts of Kindness Challenge that Toddler Approved and Coffee Cups and Crayons are co-hosting. From Martin Luther King Day to Valentine's Day they focus on Kindness, and challenge their families and others to 100 Acts of Kindness. Each week they have a different theme but the kindness acts can stand on their own. They can also be a bigger act or something small and daily.

We're joining in a little late this year, but excited to try acts of kindness ourselves. We're kicking off our participation by putting together a "winter" surprise to mail off to friends. 

I know, there are some of you out there whom probably think the idea of sending winter to someone is not necessarily a kindness act, but it is for these specific friends. This summer a family of friends moved to Florida. When we saw them briefly at Christmas, their two boys both mentioned missing the New England winter weather. 

So we decided, why not mail a little "winter" to them down in Florida?

Confetti Snow Dough

Over the holiday break I took a bag of confetti out of the party box as we got ready to celebrate New Year's Eve. Yet, I couldn't quite bring myself to let confetti out free rein with the boys . . . who knows what corners of the house it would wind up in.

Mid-month I got the idea of mixing the confetti into some fun sensory play and we came up with this confetti snow dough.

In the past we've had fun making "Cold" Sparkle and Snow Dough which we originally learned of through Growing a Jeweled Rose. This is such a great sensory recipe that creates an actual cold feeling sensory snow. This time we enjoyed throwing in a little extra special sparkle: the confetti! 

Snowmen at Work Playdough Play

Many people know the books Snowmen at Night and Snowmen at Christmas by Caralyn and Mark Buehner, we were pleased to buy the books in a set a few years ago. Along with the set came Snowmen at Work, which is part of the same series but not as well known. This winter the boys have discovered the book and they love reading it. In the book a little boy ponders if the snowmen (and snowwomen) have jobs they do when humans are not looking.

We used the book as a launching point to inspire our newest playdough play invitation. 

To begin with I made up a batch of our basic cooked playdough and kept it white. 

Snowball Fight Painting

Little Brother is quickly approaching three (how did that happen?!) but in true toddler fashion he still tends to like projects best that are pretty quick. If there are too many steps to a project it tends to lose his interest. This snowball fight painting was right up his alley the other day though.

While we've been happy to get a little snow, it's still not quite enough to enjoy our typical winter activities and we find ourselves wishing for more snow. Until then, we're trying to create winter fun in other ways.

10 Inside Play Ideas for Winter Vacation

In general I find that the winter vacation following Christmas goes by pretty quickly. We usually have family members to see, new things to play with, and some fresh snow to enjoy outside. Not to mention the fun of our Family Focused New Year's Eve to distract us only a week after Christmas.

But, just in case vacation stretches on a little too long for kiddos, it's always nice to have a few things up my "Mama" sleeve. Here are a few of our favorite inside or winter themed activities we may wind up trying this week. Most of them involve materials you probably already have on hand in your cupboard or playroom.

Snowflake Rubbing Paintings

Sometimes we create art for the product and sometimes we create art for the process. This was definitely a process based project that turned out very pretty in the end.

To create our artwork we used some basic materials we had around the house, including some plastic snowflake decorations we've used in our windows before. Quite a while ago I thought about trying to use them as rubbings. We finally had an afternoon to play with them a few weeks ago. 

Road Crew Sensory Snow Bin

Although the first snow storm last week didn't bring us as much as we expected, the second storm this week combined with with a few smaller storms has definitely started to make the snow add up. And although some grown ups may feel differently (this time I was actually excited to get some snow, but who knows how I'll feel in a few weeks) most kiddos usually get pretty excited about the snow coming down.

The other thing that my boys get excited about is watching the plow trucks.

We live on a small, dead end road but our town road crew, or highway department as they're called in larger areas, plows a large chunk of our roadway. For our boys, that's part of the highlight of a snow storm: they get to watch the plow trucks at work.

This lead me to be inspired to create our newest sensory play activity: Road Crew Sensory Snow Bin.

Across the east coast cities and towns have people busy at work plowing, loading, and removing snow. What kiddo wouldn't enjoy recreating the same experience?

Groundhog Paper Bag Puppet

This post is going up a little late for the day, but this morning I felt so bad for the poor groundhog. Between the Superbowl and the large snow storm hitting the East Coast, he barely got a mention on the morning news.

And of course we hate to let a holiday pass us by, so why not honor the groundhog on this snowy Groundhog Day at home?

We've enjoyed making paper bag animal puppets before, they're quick and easy to assemble and take very little prep time. (Check out our dragon and owl puppets here.)

Cardboard Igloo and Ice Fishing Play

We love cardboard box play and take any opportunity we can get to grab a big box for really fun activities. So when we offered a freezer box around the holidays, of course we couldn't turn it down. With a little paint and imagination, we turned our box into an igloo!

Big Brother has been really enjoying some weekend ice fishing with Daddy, and liked the idea of extending it into play at home. This inspired us to turn our box into an igloo and add some fishing fun too. 

5 Books to Read While You're Waiting for Winter

Winter is on our doorstep, the warning of snow has been in the forecast for several days. And although we've already had a little dusting it will be any day now that we get our first major storm. The coming of winter is a mixed blessing. Everyone is excited to play in the snow, and of course snow now might mean a white Christmas next month. But of course snow also means slippery roads, damp snow gear, and lots of shoveling. No matter how you're feeling, winter is coming. Here's our recommendation of 5 books you can read while you're waiting for winter.

5 Books to Read While You're Waiting for Winter

Some these books I've enjoyed reading in my classroom over the years, and others are books we've recently been exploring. Of course, there are many more that get you in mood for winter, but these books look at either preparing for the winter, or the first snow fall.

Painting Snow- Inside!

We put this together on a whim this evening and we had so much fun with it I had to share it tonight. Dinner was taking a little longer than expected, and after a funny weather afternoon it was suddenly nice out. As it was too late to get everyone into their snow gear to go out, I decided to bring it inside!

We've painted snow outside before, we've used it to add color to snowmen and snow forts. We've also played with snow inside before, but we've never combined them. It was a hit!

Olympic Luge Marble Painting

We try to limit TV time in our house during the weekdays, but with the Olympic coverage Big Brother and I couldn't resist watching some of the events late this afternoon. Big Brother was instantly interested in the women's luge singles. He had lots of questions about the sport, many which I couldn't answer, but it did inspire a pre-dinner project.

To begin with I cut about three feet off a clean pool noodle and then split it lengthwise down the center. We collected some of the marbles from Big Brother's room and our washable poster paint. I taped a large sheet of white paper to the floor.

Arctic Sticky Collage

A few weeks ago we had a lot of fun with our Used Wrapping Paper Sticky Collage which we spontaneously put together. When a family member gave us a box of old National Geographic magazines I thought it would be fun to try a "themed" collage. As several of the magazines had polar animals, it seemed like it would be a good idea to try an arctic theme.

"Cold" Sparkle Snow Dough

A few weeks ago we made Sparkle Snow Dough which proved to be a lot of fun. Big Brother's only complaint was that it didn't seem "cold" like real snow. This lead to some searching on the internet and Pinterest which helped us to this recipe for Erupting Snow. Although there seemed to be similar recipes out there, this was a great fit. We're simply calling it "Cold Sparkle Snow Dough" here.

The ingredients are simple: shaving cream, glitter, and baking soda. 

Sparkle Snow Dough

Today's rainy weather is definitely putting a damper on winter fun. No sledding, no snowman building, no using skates and snowshoes. So we decided we needed to bring some winter fun inside. I'd seen several recipes for "Cloud Dough" before and heard from other moms how fun it can be, so we decided to turn it into "Sparkle Cloud Snow Dough."

There are several different versions of cloud dough online. I went with a a flour based version. We tweaked amounts based on a couple of different recipes and added in glitter for a more wintery look.

Peppermint Sparkle Playdough

As we start to get into the winter holiday spirit we decided to make some festive playdough. We settled on making "Peppermint Sparkle Playdough."

I started with a basic cooked playdough, but added in a couple of ingredients to make it sparkly and scented: glitter and peppermint extract.