Snow Theme Playdate

I participate in a weekly themes playdate with another friend and our boys. We started this at the start of the school year and we take turns hosting. When we host, we chose the theme and plan the activities, snack & stories to coordinate with that theme.

We all know there is only so much planning you can do that will be carried out according to plan when you are working with toddlers. In that case, the moms drink coffee while the boys play with trains & buzz around the house on scooters.

I thought that I would share twice a month the theme that I plan this year. For my first themed playdate of 2012, I decided to pick the theme of snow (basically because I want snow so bad and we just don't have any here - seriously! It's January in MN, we need snow!)

The top picture is my snowman magnet craft that we will do. It was inspired by the snowman ornaments created by A Day of Wonders. Since it is after Christmas, I thought making magnets would be better. I thought it turned out pretty cute.

Our stories for our playdate are The Snowy Day: 50th Anniversary Edition (Did you know it's the 50th Anniversary of this book!?!?) and
The Little Snowflake.

I have been really wanting to make a snowman with my kids, but for now I need to settle for making one from a homemade magnetic activity and with snowman playdough. Tutorials on how to make both will be coming soon and then will be linked up.

And finally, and maybe the most important to the boys is the snack. I decided to go with a snack that would reflect what MN looks like this year when we get a few flurries. It's all brown with just a sprinkling of snow. Now, if this was last year in Minnesota, I would have had a piece of graham cracker with and whole bunch of white frosting (instead of the thin layer of nutella I am using this year) with a handful of snowflake sprinkles (instead of this year's dusting.)

And if that isn't enough snow fun - check out what we did as a family for the family project this month for my daughter's kindergarten class. She was sent home with a drawing of a snowman and we had to work as a family to decorate it however we wanted. I am not sure if you can tell by looking at the picture, but we made "snow" by gluing on a mixture of baking soda & salt. My daughter glued on the facial features and made the scarf & hat and got sticks from the yard, I gathered all the supplies & made the snow & cut out the books & nose & applied the glue over the entire snowman. My son sprinkled the snow on everything and my husband glued on the arms and buttons.