Cabin Fever Beating Boredom Buster - #1

Perusing Mr. Poppers Penguins...

...while preparing peanuts...

...for a pleasant snack of...

...protein packed peanut butter...

...to be eaten while pontificating with pronouncements prefaced  in " p" whenever possible.

Building a Snow Fort

The weather finally warmed up enough for the children to head outside.  I passed by the kitchen window on my way to fold the endless pile of laundry, and saw them marching around in a circle.  It was a little strange, but I thought - well you know, they've been stuck inside for a while.

A little while later, when I glanced back out to check on them, I realized there was a method to their madness - they were marking out the outline of a snow fort.

They didn't quite manage an igloo, which is what it looked to me like they were going for...

...but by the time they came in for a hot chocolate warm up, I had found this fun, old, Canadian documentary to show them how close they had come to being on the right track.

How to Build an Igloo by Douglas Wilkinson, National Film Board of Canada

They got a pretty big kick out of watching Tupak and Attik Utak build their temporary structure.  In fact, they picked up so many useful pointers, they're hoping for another arctic blast, and looking around for a good Inuit style snow knife, or two.

Of course, the forecast for today is for sunshine, and a high 42°F, not exactly Igloo building weather.  I wonder what Inuits used to build in the summer...

Oh, Deer!

The snowplows finally made it to our neighborhood. 

I'm not sure who is happier...

...us, or the deer.

Building a Craft Stick and Tissue Paper, Geodesic Dome - Reading Cave

ge·o·des·ic dome:  noun, a dome constructed of short struts following geodesic lines and forming an open framework of triangles or polygons. The principles of its construction were described by Buckminster Fuller (from Google definitions)

We were snowed in yesterday, with snow too deep on our street for our van to drive through, and temperatures too cold to allow for outside play.  I decided it might be a good time to build another geodesic dome.

We built one five or six years ago out of rolled up newspaper, following instructions we found on Instructables, but my two youngest girls (ages 8 and 10) were too young then to get to help with the construction.

This time we didn't have any newspaper handy, so we settled for gluing together craft sticks (we have plenty of those left over from our popsicle stick house phase) into 58cm and 62cm long sticks.



30 - 58cm long sticks, and 35 - 62cm long sticks.

Which, sounds like a lot of gluing of sticks...

...but in reality was a quick and easy, line 'em up and glue 'em together, type of  process.

We built the bottom of our dome first - a decagon base with 62cm sides...

...for triangles - five with 62cm sides, and five with 58cm sides, alternating back and forth, and held together with duct tape (I had originally thought hot glue, but duct tape end up working better).

After the base was complete, we constructed the top - a pentagon base, again with 62cm sides...

...for 5 triangles, sharing 58cm sides, rising up from the corners and meeting above the center.

The girls held the top in place, over the base, while I quickly connected the two with a series of triangles with 58cm and 62cm sides, alternating with triangles of only 62cm sides.  It sounds more confusing than it is - honestly.  Red lines in the picture below indicate 58cm sticks, with black for the 62cm long ones.

Once we had our dome standing, we passed the afternoon watching a movie together, while gluing tissue paper over the triangles, and outlining it in tape (just to make it look pretty).

The girls were thrilled with their "reading cave".

It's the perfect place to hide away from cabin fever.

Winter Fun - Mind Challenging Puzzles

Challenging: testing one's abilities;  demanding, testing, taxing, exacting; stretching, exciting, stimulating, inspiring; difficult, tough, hard, formidable, onerous, arduous, strenuous, grueling.

I'm not sure whether or not you've happened to notice the unfinished puzzle lurking in the background of the pictures from our last few posts.  It was there while G was editing her short film.

It was the reason there was only room for four of the challengers at the table for our hot chocolate tasting (the other two were set-up at the kitchen counter).

And, it was there for the whole of the gingerbread house disaster.

In fact, it was there before the gingerbread was even baked.  Truth be told, it's been on our table for more than a week - ever since I pulled it out to work on with my mother during her pre-Christmas visit.

It's actually been in our game cupboard since July.  I bought the 1000 piece EuroGraphic's puzzle of Raphael's "Small Cowper Madonna" to go along with the book we were reading at the time - Laura Marx Fitzgerald's Under the Egg - in which the painter's work features heavily.  A house sale/fail, and packing for a move kept us from doing it then, but Christmastime seemed like an even better time to piece together the Madonna and Child, anyway.

EuroGraphics (non-affiliate link) has a number of very lovely puzzles to choose from, and an entire section of "fine art" prints to choose from.  Putting together a puzzle is a fantastic way to really focus in on, and get to know a painting - but, be warned!  If the rest of the EuroGraphics puzzles are as difficult as this one - then be prepared for a lot of slow, and painstaking piecing.

It's not the difficulty of the design, or the number of pieces, but the fact that they are oddly shaped pieces.  So oddly shaped, that it takes three, or four to come together to fill in space for what appears to be made for one normal puzzle piece.   I like puzzles, and occasionally I like a really difficult puzzle - one more challenging than the average floor puzzle I do with the children - one to remind me I'm not as smart as I can start to think I am, when comparing myself to the intelligence of my normal companions - a group of children.

This "Small Cowper Madonna" fit the bill, and was perfect for passing a stormy winter evening, or two...

...or ten.

Winter Fun - Hot Chocolate Flavor Identification Game

While the girls were outside filming in the cold, yesterday, I set up a game of mystery hot chocolate tasting, to warm them up when they came back inside.

We played the same game last year, with holiday tea blends.  It was such a big hit then, I knew we'd have to play it again, and when I happened to come across a display of individually packaged servings of hot chocolate mixes, in various flavors - I knew they'd be perfect for our first big winter storm.

With the wind howling, and the temperatures dropping, I put the kettle on to boil, and started preparing cups, and playing cards.  I made one card per player (pictured above), listing each flavor of hot chocolate we had, with a column of letters to match them to.
 

For each hot chocolate flavor, I prepared a set of cups - one for each player, with a letter on the side (different for each player), and the hot chocolate flavor on the bottom.

Then, I mixed up the hot chocolate, dipped a little into each of the players' cups, and moved them quickly to the table, with the playing cards, while the hot chocolate was still nice and warm...

The players sampled, and guessed the flavor in each of their cups...

...checking the bottoms of the cups to see if they were correct, once they had guessed all of the flavors.

The player who correctly identified the most flavors - in this case E (age 10) with 3 correct matches - was the winner. 

Just like with the teas, it was harder than we thought it would be to discern between the flavors, and there were some real surprises.  Unlike, the with the teas, we did not pick a new favorite - the children were staunch milk chocolate fans before we played the game, and remained so afterwards, as well.