Snow Play Dough - Made With Real Snow

Our snow, our beautiful snow, that brought us so much joy over the past two days, is melting, has probably already melted by the time you read this. Even as I type now, snowmen all over the neighborhood are teetering and toppling, with snowflakes turning to rain.


But not to worry - we saved some. I brought in a bowl full, and told the younger girls (ages 5 and 7) we were going to transform it...


...by mixing it with flour, salt, cream of tarter, and a splash of vanilla for good measure.


I had checked the water content of the snow ahead of time by melting a cup worth on the counter, so I knew one cup of our snow would yield slightly less than a half cup of water. Which meant for 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of salt, 2 tablespoons of cream of tarter, and a teaspoon of vanilla, we needed somewhere around 2 1/2 cups of snow.


We chopped it up, and stirred it in, until it was looking fairly sloggy.



Then, we popped it in the microwave for a minute...


...and stirred it...


...and continued microwaving and stirring at 30 second intervals until it was looking somewhat solid. The girls' attention had turned to what remained of the bowl of melting snow, and they didn't see me pull the blob from the bowl to pat and knead it until it was smooth...


...so they were quite impressed when I dramatically presented them with the transformed snow.


I should mention, that while this trick worked like gangbusters with the younger crowd in the house, the older children rolled their eyes, and walked away as soon as they saw the ingredient list. Apparently, they were already on to the whole snow-turns-into-water thing. Even so, the younger girls, who never turn down a chance to play with play dough, were happy in the knowledge there was real snow, our snow, in the dough.

It's great to be a homeschooler.