Printing
What to Do With Kids on a Snow Day
A snow day arrives with no notice, which is exactly what makes it hard. The children are delighted, the adults have a working day that has not gone anywhere, and whatever was in the cupboard is what you have. A little preparation in advance changes the day considerably, and the preparation is genuinely small.
5 min read Updated
The shape of the day
Outside first, while the novelty and the light are both at their best. Then food, then something quiet, then whatever holds. Trying to hold a structure across the whole day rarely survives contact with it, but that first ordering is worth protecting because everything downstream is easier when the outside part has already happened.
The difficult stretch is the middle of the afternoon, once wet clothes are drying and going out again is unappealing. That is the point to have something ready rather than to start looking.
Print in advance, not on the day
The reliable failure of a snow day is discovering that the printer is out of ink at the moment you need it. A small folder kept somewhere sensible, with a dozen pages already printed, removes this entirely.
Worth including: several coloring pages at different difficulty levels, a few tracing sheets if you have a younger child, and one or two things that take a long time on purpose. The last category matters most, because the aim in the afternoon is duration rather than variety.
Bringing the snow indoors
A bowl of snow on a tray occupies a young child for a surprisingly long time, and it answers a real question: what happens to it. Watching it melt and measuring what is left is a genuine observation, and children are usually taken aback by how little water a full bowl produces.
Coloring a winter scene after coming in works better than before going out, because the child now has something specific in mind. Snow is also the one subject where the honest answer is to leave most of the page white and shade only the shadows, which is a useful thing to show a child once.
When to stop trying
At some point the plan stops working and the sensible move is to let the day be what it is. A snow day is not a school day and does not need to produce anything.
What children remember about them is almost never the activities. It is the fact that the ordinary rules were suspended for a day, which is free.
Common questions
What should I print before a snow day happens?
A dozen pages at mixed difficulty, kept in a folder somewhere findable. Include a couple that take a long time on purpose; the hard part of a snow day is the middle of the afternoon, and duration matters more than variety by then.
How do you color snow?
Leave it as the white of the paper and add light blue or grey only in the shadowed areas. Snow in shade genuinely is blue-grey rather than white, and shading only the shadows makes the untouched paper read as bright snow.
How long should a snow day activity last?
Plan for the afternoon rather than the morning. The first hours take care of themselves; it is hour four that needs something already prepared.