I
admit, I am the mom that actually likes snow days. I understand that our school district is averse to cancelling
school becuase our urban school provide safety and warm meals for many of
our neighborhood children.
That said, I absolutely love letting
our boys sleep in and then surprising them with the news that school has been
cancelled for the day. I love making a
big breakfast late in the morning; hanging out in our p.j.’s all day, playing
games, baking treats, reading together and playing in the snow.
The heavy snow provided a
gorgeous winter wonderland on Sunday, great day of sledding and a lengthy snow
ball fight with our new neighbors before the dangerous cold settled in.
Our family considered
ourselves to be quite lucky this week that we had power, heat, running water, cable
and internet access everyday. These
modern conveniences are so commonplace that we rarely stop to think about our
lives without them…until we don’t have them.
We brought that awareness to our boys as we hosted friends one evening
that had lost power for the day.
And while we were grateful
for the chance keep our technology charged and ready to use, we took full advance
of the time together to play games. The
types of games that we played did not require any technology. The games were even educational (maybe that
was accidental; I will never admit that to my kids!) Our boys loved playing the
games not because we kept score but because they enjoyed the challenge, they
enjoyed being silly, and they simply enjoyed our time together.
We also took the time to read. We individually read our own books and
articles and we read together a Harry Potter book. We try to demonstrate to our
boys that reading is fun, as well as a necessary part of our jobs, faith
practice and volunteer work.
However, we completely failed
at the “winter science” experiments. We
threw the boiling water, and we blew bubbles hoping to see them freeze. Neither one of our experiments worked out the
way we had read them about on the internet.
We tried to figure out together why these experiments didn’t work. We hope our failed attempts were still
provided an opportunity to learn for our boys, even if we were all a little bummed
out.
We appreciated the winter
break homework packet, as we directed our reluctant scholars to work on the
packets each day. Admittedly, our appreciation for the packets may have been
greater than that of our children.
So this week, I had my fill of
snow day fun. We may not have needed a full week off from school, but our
family took full advantage of the unplanned, unscheduled together time.
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