Plan B: Spanish to Snow

This has been Spanish week. The Emperor is taking a 5 day Spanish for Educators class. We have been doing Speak in a Week, various Spanish computer games , worksheets from Enchanted Learning, and a bunch of games on the big chalkboard/driveway. We have a Spanish number line out there (looks a lot like the English one but sounds different) and 9 colored splotches ( Donde es azul?). I have plans to draw locations (beach, restaurant, house, etc) but God hasn't erased the board yet (thunder and lightning, no rain).

It's a great plan and it was going well until Choclo got an ear infection and Oob started cutting molars. Look, it's cranky Spanish week! Do Spanish screaming babies sound the same? Time to retrench!

Let's have a crazy mixed up day! So, after breakfast, I sent the kids to get their pjs on. They came down wearing them inside out and backwards. I'm married to a teacher, I know there is only one reason for doing that: you are hoping for a snow day!


So we played with instant snow. These are polyacrylimide crystals you can buy. They look like powder but expand 100x with water and look like snow. If you refrigerate or freeze it, it feels like snow. Try reconstituting them with ice water! I find this a little expensive (although they can be dried out and reused) and have experimented with getting the crystals from (clean!) disposable diapers. This works, but I haven't been able to fully separate the crystals from the cottony substrate used to hold the crystals in place. I end up with a pile of snow with cotton balls in it. Research continues.

The snow session turned into a foam paint session, probably because the foam (shaving cream) looked liked snow also. Oob and Choclo ate only a little and now everyone smells like they are fresh from the barber.

We ate breakfast again and then dessert: snowballs AKA Mexican wedding cookies (it's a crossover, Spanish snow!). I sent them up to put on swim suits so that we could cut out snowflakes without getting snow on their pjs. We cut out the ones in the picture, then they went out to play with liquid snow on the slip and slide.

Now that Oob is napping and Choclo is zoned out on Mighty Machines, we will be able to make snow cones. The little guys don't like the noise the machine makes. We will make a super saturated sugar solution to flavor the cones and experiment with how quickly the sugar solution melts the ice vs. water. Maybe we'll try salt water, too!