In Home Entertainment: Frozen Creepy Crawly Fun

So one good thing about the below freezing temps we're currently experiencing is the opportunity for fun frozen projects that we wouldn't otherwise be able to swing (our freezer is always filled to the brim with no room for even a frozen water bead to hide). Mom came up with a mishmash of things we've already done (frozen water balloons and ice/salt/watercolors experiment) and the frozen toy excavation ideas we've seen and wanted to try. She put some of our squishy, stretchy froggies and bugs into balloons, filled them up with water and put them outside overnight to freeze.

Mom actually kept them a surprise from us until the next day until she sat us down with bowls full of salt and watercolors.  We had no idea what project was in store for us, but then she brought down containers full of frozen creepy crawlies! Once Kane got over his initial upset at mom freezing "his favorite toys ever," we sprinkled the frozen pieces liberally with salt. And then we waited until little tunnels began to form and squirted liquid watercolors over them.

We used the cracks traced by the watercolors to find weaknesses to break our buddies out. The froggies turned out to be SUPER fun -- they're squishy and sticky and we ended up being able to extract them out of teeny tiny holes in the ice. The buggies held their ground and we ended up having to wait for the ice to melt to free them.

There is an incredible array of ice projects out in the blogosphere, some of which are on our to do list before the temps turn back up. But check out these amazing projects that those in the persistent cold have come up with:

* an AMAZING rainbow ice igloo 
* gorgeous icicles 
* an outdoor ice sculpture garden
* outdoor ice ornaments

In Home Entertainment: "Snow" Painting

We've seen a little bit of cold weather so far this year, but NO snow (save the snow mom ran on in NYC recently, which jacked up her knee, natch). And although it's entirely possible we'll get our fair share of February and March snowmageddons, just in case, mom bought us some fake snow to mix up. We could have approached this as a science experiment, and we did a little in the beginning, but we're not quite up to polymers just yet (although I think there is some of this in our new science kit). Instead, we decided to have fun watching it erupt (it literally grows up over itself once you add water) and then make some snow paintings.

Mom gave each of us liquid watercolors and eyedroppers with which to paint. It took us a little bit to get the coordination down, but then we went to town. And we actually painted for quite a while before one of us, I'm pretty sure it was Kane, decided to start painting by just pouring the watercolors on to the snow. And then a science experiment kicked in spontaneously -- we took turns balancing the mixture of liquid and polymer and changing the material back and forth between more of a slushy mess (we decided this was ice) and a fluffy snow (by adding more polymer).

I played for a while and liked making a rainbow of colors, but Kane was mesmerized for almost two hours.  He made igloos, forts and waged war between the "blue ice" and the "green snow." When I gave up and headed for the bathtub, he took over some of my purple ice and had a sneak attack on the blue ice. It only takes a little to make a lot, but we loved the colors we made so much, we insisted on saving them in airtight containers. And mom swears it wasn't as difficult to clean up as it looks -- it's basically the same stuff inside of diapers, though, and if you've ever put a diaper through the washing machine, you know how much fun that is. So she suggests making sure to rinse it off of your clothes first!

So take that, lame D.C. weather.