Snow Day Our Way

Some people are outdoor people. They hear “snow day” and squeal with delight already planning the snowshoeing, sledding, snowman making fun. Then there’s me. My plans for the day do not regularly include freezing my butt off for the sake of fun. I do love to ski, but I’m not soaking in the beauty of the outdoors, I’m indulging in the feeling of freefall. And if I’m being totally honest, I love the lodges with their hot chocolate, cute snow boots, and long days with my friends as much as the hills.

So when the school calls with those dreaded words, “snow day”, I have to make plans quickly. My kids want to play IN the snow and I say okay, let’s play WITH the snow.

Making frost and ice

I point out the small bit of frost on our windows and ask the kids if they think we can make frost inside the house. The kids both scream,”Yay! I want to do an experiment.” Then Bree adds, “I know a snow experiment. Let’s get the dot to dot paints.”

We painted the snow last year. You can read all about that here: http://pedigreedhousewife.blogspot.com/2013/03/snow-day-snow-cones.html

Instead of getting out paint, I get our artichoke hearts. The kids start to moan and whine immediately. I’m just using the can guys, you can scream about eating the artichokes later when we have them sautéed for lunch. For now I put the veggies in Tupperware into to the fridge and clean out the can and grab two spoons and some salt.

The kids each get a spoon and I tell them to fill the can one quarter with snow. (I always try to sneak in some math.)

  

Then we fill the can half way. Then ¾ of the way. Then we dump it out and fill it by thirds. At 2/3 full I tell them to bring in the can and we’ll make it frost up. They put the can on a paper towel on a tray table and fill the rest of the can with salt and stir it up.

The paper towel is wetted by the mess, but if not, put a little water on the towel to speed it up. We watch as the base of the can frosts up. The kids like making their fingerprints in the frost.

The kids also want to see what happens with more snow or more salt and so we do a few rounds of experiments. Without the salt no frost is formed.  Then to fits of giggles we experiment with the opposite, and as expected with only salt and no snow in the can, no frost was formed either. They see no appreciable difference in amount of frost based on how much salt or snow they add and conclude that to make frost you just need a mixture of both snow and salt on the paper towel.

We leave this station (I’d set out two tray tables with different set ups) but when we return the girls are so excited to see that rather than melting in the metal can, the snow we had turned to ice. We talk about insulation and how cold the can is.

Salting

The second station is to show them why we salt the driveway.

Two bowls are filled with salt. The dot to dot paint is left out for the girls to color the salt. The coloring of the salt is fun and useful - so the girls can see the salt when we put it on the snow. When the salt is all colored, we get bowls of snow from the deck and sprinkle salt on top of the snow.

We observe that the snow with salt on it melts faster.

Then we pack the salt onto one side of a bowl for each kid and they sprinkle snow on top to simulate  snow falling on a salted driveway. The snow melts right away.

Playing

The kids want to take the paints outside and dye the deck again so I send them out bundled up and I watch from inside while I type this blog. Don't worry, I'll join them.

If you want more snowy day experiments, this blog is awesome:

http://cocopreme.hubpages.com/hub/Easy-Snow-and-Ice-Experiments

We’ll be doing many of these as the snow days keep coming this winter.

I hope you are enjoying this snowy winter in your own way.

<3 Pedigreed Housewife