Cold Weather Classics - Snowy Day Science, Snacks and Literary Tie-ins for Children

If you're in a part of the country where the temperatures are plummeting this week, don't miss out on these winter weather must-dos (thanks to Annette from The Simple Home for inspiration - we're glad to finally have some winter weather to play in, too).

Watching soap bubbles freeze.

For best results wait for a windless moment.  Blow into the bubble wand with your mouth a little away from the soap, so the bubble won't fill with hot air, and rise too quickly away from you.  It's easiest to view the bubbles freezing if you catch them on the wand...

...or view them on the ground.  But, it's fun to watch them pop in the air too, because they fly apart like little sheets of plastic.

Let the heat from your hand melt an icicle so you can watch it drip.

It's not very scientific, but children find it fascinating.  You can't really save icicles (or snowballs) in a frost-free type freezer, though - the process that eliminates frost, will also do in your frozen treasures.


Collect pans full of clean snow for making molasses snow candy (recipe here) like the Ingalls in Little House in the Big Woods.

It's a lot of fun to make...

...and a good chance to brush up on thermometer skills...

...while you discuss the meaning of the idiom "slow as molasses"...

...but honestly, it doesn't taste very good.  You can try to suspend reality, and imagine you've been living in the "olden days", out in the woods, and haven't had any real candy...but even then, it's a stretch.

Or, you can save your pans of clean snow and make yummy snow ice cream (recipe here), or lemon snow ice (find our post on that, here) like in...

...Andrea Cheng's The Lemon Sisters (have a box of tissues handy, if you decide to read the picture book to your children).

And of course, if the thermometer is dipping down well below zero, you don't want to miss turning boiling water into instant snow (though you might want to check out our tip for that one first).

It's great to be a homeschooler.