Looking for some winter day fun over the holiday vacation?  Once the first snow hits, this will be a great snowy day activity.

What is it? An art project involving icicles and frozen blocks of colored ice

What will I need? Food coloring, water, ice trays, molds, muffin tins and other containers

You can’t have as much snow as we do and not have an abundance of icicles. We decided to incorporate some of ours into a sculpture, joining them to ice blocks made by freezing colored water in ice-cube trays, Jell-O molds and yogurt containers. We placed all the materials on an outdoor table, and everyone took turns building totem poles, monsters and free-form sculptures, gluing the blocks of ice with a little dribble of water (it quickly froze).

Helpful Hint: For consistency of hardness, consider making your colored blocks in the freezer rather than outdoors.

Gingerbread Play-Dough

Ingredients

• 1 Cup flour
• 1/2 Cup salt
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• Spices--Cinnamon, Allspice, Ginger, Nutmeg

What you do:

Mix the dry ingredients. Add spices a small amount at a time until the dough smells and looks like you want it too. Mix water and oil together first and then add them to the dry ingredients and stir. In a pot, cook the mixture for two to three minutes, stirring frequently. The dough will start to pull away from the sides of the pot and stick together. When this happens, take the playdough out of the pan and knead the dough until it becomes soft and smooth. Allow the dough to cool and then store it in an airtight container.

After reading the stories about all the different gingerbread friends throughout the month of December, it was time to try our hand at making our own.  We measured and mixed the ingredients, stirred and stirred, rolled the dough then cut them out.  We knew that the recipe said to cook them for a whole eight minutes, no more no less and NO PEEKING.  We put them in the oven, but when we looked to see if they were done…our gingerbread friends were GONE!  Our tray was empty.  We quickly put our coats on and began searching outside incase they had slipped out while we weren’t looking.  They were nowhere to be found!  After searching high and low, we finally found them hiding in our classroom.  Thank goodness the fox didn’t find them before we did!

Our Christmas Parties started in full swing on Wednesday morning complete with Music, Stories, and of course-Gingerbread Cookies!  We had a great time sharing our holiday songs, favorite stories, and decorating cookies with our moms, dads, and grandparents.  Thanks to everyone who could make it-we love having you!

A scientist from “Mad Science” joined us today to introduce our preschoolers to the exciting world of color.  The “Mad Scientist” walked us through some exciting demonstrations about primary colors and color mixing.  Be sure to ask  your little one what they learned today!  The kids really seemed to enjoy everything she had to say and were intrigued at all of her experiments.  They will visit again toward the end of the year to share a different program with about worms!