30 Days of Hands on Play Challenge: Day 16 and 17

Okay, I'll be honest, I was not thrilled when I saw yesterday's activity: play outside. Yes, we went outside a couple of weeks ago and we didn't have to, but it has since snowed and it is 20 degrees colder.

I told the kids that was our activity and they were so excited so I had to just go along with it. And you know what?! It was fun! I got the kids (and myself) all bundled up and we grabbed the sled and headed to the front yard. Will walked outside before I had a chance to get mittens on his hands and ended up falling and getting his hands covered with snow. Once I got his hands brushed off, I put his mittens on. The first thing the girls did was lay in the snow and make angels.


Will fell a couple more times and ended up with snow covered mittens and lots of snow up his sleeves. I thought that may be the end of his and my outside time. I told the girls to head to the backyard and I brought Will into the house. I took off Will's mittens and realized that his hands were still pretty warm so I just found a different pair of mittens and pulled his sleeves way down over them. We headed back outside and found the girls in the backyard going down the hill on the sled.


I took a couple of turns with Will and then suggested that we head to the front yard again because the hill was bigger there. We all took some more turns sliding down the hill. I then decided to shovel the driveway while the kids played. We were out there for an hour and a half!! The kids had fun sledding, playing with some of their wheeled toys on the driveway as I cleared it, and rolling around in the snow. Maybe I need to take them out more often...


Today's activity was: build a reading tent. I decided to set a up something similar to a fort in the living room facing the window for lots of light. The girls climbed right in and looked at some of the books from our trip to the library last week. Ellie had fun relaxing and looking at books. Addy was a little more interested in figuring out different ways to destroy the tent...


Right after I got the tent set up, Will woke up from his nap. Once I got him cleaned up (this is a story in and of itself...) we all got in the tent and read a few books.