OK, parents, what’s your plan? With Austin, Bastrop, Eanes, Hayes, Manor, Del Valle, Elgin and more districts canceling school on Friday because of the threat of ice, what will you do with the kids?
First, there’s the EEK my kids have no school! We get to sleep in!
Then there’s the EEK my kids have no school and now a three-day weekend. When will the choruses of “I’m bored” hit? (Catch my weekend calendar, here.)
Here are a couple if ideas of what you can do Friday, if you can’t or don’t want to leave the house:
If there’s still snow on the ground, build a snow man. OK, it will be tiny, but why not? One year, we used Mr. Potato Head parts to decorate the one we made.
In 2007, it snowed enough to make a snowman. Ava and Ben Villalpando built a small one in the driveway. Nicole Villalpando/American-Statesman
Plan and make a meal together. Haven’t gone grocery shopping and don’t want to brave the store in the rain? No worries. We bet you can scrounge up some ingredients that you have on hand. Get the kids involved to see how creative you can get. This is also the perfect time to teach kids how to bake a cake from scratch.
Make recycled crafts. Dig through your recycling bin and the junk drawer for some found objects. Bring out the glue, the tape, the markers, the glitter, the stickers, the paint. Bragging rights or prizes could be awarded. There could even be judges.
The Little Yoga House
Get some exercise. Search YouTube for yoga for kids and do a session together. Blow up a balloon, move out the furniture in your living room and play volleyball. Play hide and seek. Have a snowball fight if there’s still snow on the ground.
Make homemade Play-Doh. DIY Natural has this recipe:
1 cup of flour (whatever kind you have on hand)
¼ cup of salt
½ cup of water
3 to 5 drops of food coloring
Mix together the flour and the salt.
Mix together ½ cup of warm water with a few drops of food coloring.
Slowly pour the water into the flour mixture, stirring as you pour. Stir until combined, then knead with your hands until the flour is completely absorbed. If the dough is too sticky, add more flour until it doesn’t stick at all.
Or make Goop, which is one part water to two parts corn starch. Mix it in a zippered bag. Throw in some food coloring and get to playing.
Watch “Moana” again and sing along. Disney
Hold a moviethon in your house. Check out the Netflix, the Hulu, the Amazon Prime for the movies your kids haven’t yet seen, or show them some classics from your childhood. Pop the popcorn and enjoy.
“The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats.
Bring on the books. Story time is great togetherness time. Build a fort out of sheets in the living room and use your flashlights to have a story adventure.
Bring out the board games and cards. Start with Go Fish and work your way up to poker (no betting… OK, maybe just pennies). Our new favorite board game is “The Oregon Trail” based on that computer game I played as a kid in school when they were teaching us how to program on an Apple IIc. We also love some “Apples to Apples” and that game that is about a bull and his excrement.
Make puppets. That sock that is missing its match, that lunch bag or gift bag make a perfect medium. Or eat Popsicles and use the sticks to attach paper characters to. (See we just wanted the Popsicle.) You can even create a play to go with your new puppet friends. If the light goes out, create shadow puppets using a flashlight.
Have a dance party. Oh, yes! Crank up the jams and get grooving. You can even introduce them to something from the 1980s. What?
