Blizzard 2017 – Time for Cookies, Hot Cocoa and Snowman Learning

amy-nycfc — Written by Amy Rios Crochet Artist/SAHM

I was thrilled last night when I had heard it was going to snow. I was so sad for Spencer that the snow melted literally the day after we went sledding. You can read A Snowy Day and experience his joy too. He had so much fun that on the walk home he asked if we could go again tomorrow. Sure bud…. except it was 40 degrees and sunny and all the snow melted. I felt so bad when he looked out the window the next morning. Today when he woke up he said “Mamma look its snowing its snowing!” and was jumping up and down. I said “Yes! We are going sledding again, we will have hot cocoa and bake some cookies.” And then we got outside. It was so deep he had a hard time walking and he fell numerous

times. When we finally got to the hill he could barely walk up it. Then when we got up to the top and I got him on his snow seat he couldn’t go down it. The last time I had him lie down and raise his little feet up and slide down on his back. Today the snow was so deep he literally couldn’t pick his feet up high enough. We still had fun in the snow. He did log rolls down the hill and then told me to do it. I haven’t done log rolls in I don’t want to even think about how many years.. but I did them. And they were awesome. Why did I ever stop rolling down hills? An amazing dad showed up with his kids and a toboggan and he let Spencer ride down with him a few times. He loved it. Maybe next winter we are going to have to get a better sled. He made some snow angels and I had brought a tackle box to fill with snow to take home. I have some ideas of what we will be doing with the snow tomorrow.

I have been meaning to get in some educational activities lately. Not to toot my own horn, but I can not believe the interest I am having with my crochet business. So Spencer’s learning activities have kind of been pushed to the back burner. I had made him a bunch of things in the past. But I think I had started him too early because it wasn’t seeming to sink in and he didn’t really have the attention span for it. I decided to wait for a little bit and try again in a few months. Recently he has asked me to play more games with him again. Well today I decided to make him a few things.

I found this really cute free snowman printable. I have this laminator and these pouches. I got my laminator last February on sale for like $20 (that was how I talked my husband into it.) The pouches are a little expensive but I buy them when they are on sale. When you do the math the pouches break down to being about 12 cents each. So I can’t really complain that much. I have this paper to make all of my learning activities. It is a little sturdier than regular paper so it makes the activities more durable. I also have these velocro dots. One of these days I am going to make a listing of all the blogs and websites that I follow to get all of my learning activities together. I had bought The ABC’s of Teaching Preschool from Teaching Mama. Angela has a wonderful website that I highly recommend that you go check out. She recommended the laminator, pouches and paper and I am thrilled I got them along with her book. It is because of her that I feel I can really do this home school thing for pre K.

While I was cutting out the snow men I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with all the pieces. It felt like a good candidate for a sticky wall activity, which is originally what I was going to do. Spencer likes those and he actually plays with them on his own. But it is a pain in the neck to get a large piece of contact paper on the wall and before you put it up you have to draw the shapes on the non sticky side so your kid has an idea of what should go where. I have done a few activities like that which I will eventually post about. (I did take a bunch of pictures of him doing the various ones I have made). Then I heard the sound of velcro ripping and I turned around. Spencer had out his books that I had made him. Awhile back I made him these adapted interactive books that I had found on Teachers Pay Teachers. He has The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Brown Bear and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Pretty much the idea is that there are pieces that he tears off and puts on other pages (Hence the need for velcro dots. I also have little binder rings like these to keep the books together.) So instead of doing a sticky wall I decided to do a velcro dot project in a file folder. I had never heard of file folder games before last year. But they are actually quiet handy. They are self contained and you can keep them together (at least that is the idea).

When we got back home I made some Homemade Hot Cocoa. His third birthday was Polar Express themed and you can’t have Polar Express party without hot cocoa. I had found a recipe and I adapted it to my situation. I literally had a soup stock pot over an open fire making a huge batch of hot cocoa…yes I am a very committed (crazy) Mamma. Well now I am spoiled and I can’t ever go back.

Homemade Hot Cocoa with 4 ingredients

8 oz of Chocolate morsels

1 can of evaporated milk

2 cups of milk

1 0z of Vanilla

I get all my ingredients at BJs. The prices are great especially for the vanilla.

I put the chocolate in with about 1/4 of the can on milk to help with the melting process. Stir with a whisk continuously. Add the rest of the can in once the chocolate is melted. I put enough whole milk (about 2 cups) in until the chocolate looks like a good chocolate milk color. Whisk continuously to get the chocolate integrated. Pour in some vanilla for a little extra punch of flavor. Heat until its hot enough to be hot cocoa but not so hot that you can’t drink it. Do not walk away from this, boiled milk is disgusting. It literally take like 5 minutes to make.