Ever find yourself in a winter funk? For me, it usually hits hard in February. Christmas is over, the cold weather is miserable, and there is still at least a month until things start to warm up. All I can think about is all the fun things I can do when Spring comes. I get desperate to get out of the house, to enjoy some sunshine, and just to be done with the dreary cold winter. Knowing this about myself, I am always trying to come up with ways to counter balance the Funk. This year, I came up with a game for myself and one of my dear friends and our kids (1, 2.5, 2 & almost 5). It is called, Countdown to Spring. The idea is this. We came up with 12 fun ideas of activities we would like to do with our kids or places we would like to go. We wrote each idea down on a card and placed the card into an envelope. The envelopes all go into a lovely wicker treasure box, and each week we figure out when we have time to get together. The kids draw an activity from the box for that day. It is a surprise for them and a surprise for us. Plus, we realized that we have 12 activities we are looking forward to this winter. (And as a bonus, we actually realized there are three weekend activities we want to make sure we do this winter. They could not go in the countdown because they will have to be on specific days, but they came out in the brainstorming.)
The details: We decided that if an activity needed snow we would put a snowflake sticker on the envelope and then only put those envelopes in the box on weeks where we will have snow.
Any activities which need to have special supplies on hand we purchase ahead of time so we don't have to make a quick run to the store when the card is pulled.
We tried to keep cost down. Activities are free or low cost. They include places we can pack a lunch or eat at one of our homes. We also tried to come up with activities including stuff we have in our homes already.
We realized there was one little bump. We were planning on having the kids take turns drawing cards. However, with a week between draws, they will lose track of whose turn it is. This will also made the process pretty uneventful for the kids who don't draw each week. To avoid the potential issue, we have the kids draw straws to see who gets to pick the envelope. We will see how that goes, but we drew the first envelope last week and they seemed to love it.
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| Museum of Natural History Jan 17, 2014 |
The activities:
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| Paint your own pottery Jan 21, 2014 |
2- Paint pottery: Just bought some from Amazon. This is the one I got.
3- Photo "Booth" Fun: Got together some fun accessories into a large bin. The kids can dig through them and pose for funny pictures.
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| Bowling Feb 4, 2014 |
5- Toy Story Movie Party: I have left over cookie dough from christmas and I have Toy story cookie cutters. I will make the cookies ahead of time, so the kids can decorate cookies, make popcorn, and play with our Toy story toys and watch Toy Story 2!)
6- Super hero day: We are making capes and playing super hero. Reading super hero themed books too!
7- Throwing ribbons art
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| Sledding and Hot chocolate Feb 6, 2014 |
9- Sledding and warm up with Hot chocolate
10- Museum of Natural History (Dino Museum)
11- Bowling day!
12- Hand puppets: Between our two families we have a good amount of puppets. We are going to pick books that coordinate with out puppets and make any extra puppets we need to fill the characters we are missing. Then we will act out some stories with our puppets!
So excited to get started! Friday we go to the Museum. I will add pictures as we go, and a recap at the end of the countdown.
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