Outside-In

All of our snow had melted and then it came back...slightly demoralizing for this mommy who is ready for spring.  My children, however, were not devastated by the reappearance of snow.  In fact, it was quite the contrary;  they were desperate to go out.  But, one forgot his boots at Grandma and Grandpa's house and one had bronchitis.  So we had a snow-depressed mommy, a bootless little boy, and a hacking little girl.  Combine this together and you will find me shoveling snow into buckets while in my pajamas.

Yup.  We brought the outside in.  SNOW!!

The teacher in me could not let this go by without some experimentation.  We tasted the snow, smelled it, observed that any container holding the snow became cold, and of course, we had to look at melting.

We made three "snowcastles" and predicted which one would melt first.  The fun of the inside-snow lasted long after we cleaned up while we watched the melting process.

We had such a good time!  I should have timed it, but they played for a LONG TIME completely happy and completely independently.  Eli eventually told me that he was cold and shortly after that, when Abby's profusely running nose could no longer be contained, I cut her off.

Two added bonuses:

• We used toy bins and toy dishes for our play.  These are not items that regularly get cleaned, but on this day they got wet and were wiped with a towell.  That counts as cleaning, right?
• I drank my coffee, in my pajamas, under a blanket while my kids played in the snow.  Perfect.