An Arizona Snow Day

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the kids and Mike had the day off.  We had our own version of a snow day here in sunny Arizona.

My brother and his family were in town with their two little boys, so we had some extra cousin time this weekend.  We had a yummy lunch of In 'N Out burgers for the dads and Ned's Krazy Sub sandwiches for the moms and kids at Grammie's house.  Then, we spent some time in the "great outdoors", indoors at the giant Bass Pro Shop.  The boys had fun exploring the tents and atv's, looking at the giant fish and stuffed animals and roaming around the store.

We also made snowmen, with play dough.  We made snow dough, using this play dough recipe, only I added some orange extract (Mr. Two wanted that instead of peppermint) instead of the kool-aid mix.  I also added some fine silver glitter to give it some sparkle.

I gave the boys carrot shaped buttons and round buttons, pieces of ribbon and wiggle eyes to make their own snowmen.  They started out making traditional snowmen, with three round balls for the body, scarves, carrot noses.

Then, it quickly turned into melted snowmen (by squishing them) then a giant mass of button encrusted playdough.  This turned out to be a great fine motor skill practice as I had them pick out all of the buttons from the dough and poke all the remaining dough out of the button holes with toothpicks.

 

Basically, the clean up took a lot longer than the actual play time, but they seemed to have fun with the cleaning too.  Well, maybe not so much for Mr. Three...

I found this idea on Pinterest and decided to adapt it to go along with our snow day.  I gave the kids a small container of water and sponge brushes to paint some foam snowflakes I had on hand.  Then they stuck the flakes all over our sliding glass door.

They loved this and stuck with it for well over half an hour (which was great so that I could fix dinner).  They had fun pretending they were looking out the window at a real snow storm.

That night, after soup and grilled cheese, we went to Bahama Bucks to have a tasty snow treat.  Mr. One and Mr. Two shared a shaved ice with cotton candy and strawberry flavoring, and Mr. Three had a great time eating Mike's and my shaved ice.  Yum!

We may not have typical snow days here in the hot southwest, but we can still enjoy them in our own way!

Looking for some snowy day good reads?  Go here for my list of snow favorites.  You can also try here and here and here for some favorite winter activities we have done in the past.

Happy winter!