Play dough (courtesy of Berny Unruh)
“I really am a kid at heart! I love making homemade play dough. It is so warm and relaxing, and you only five ingredients.”
First, mix the first four ingredients together thoroughly:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 tsp. cream of tartar
Package of colored, flavored drink (Kool-aid)
Mix the liquid ingredients in a separate measuring cup
1 cup water
2 Tsp. oil
Combine the dry and liquid ingredients.
Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it comes together in a ball. Remove from heat and place on freezer paper or a cookie sheet and allow to cool slightly. Knead gently for a short period of time.
Store in a container or in a plastic zip bag in the refrigerator.
Soap Snow
Gather together two bars of white soap, a grater and warm water.
First grate soap into shavings. Then, add a small amount of water to shavings and begin molding the soap into a nice snowball shape, adding more shavings or water as needed. Make about two snowballs per bar of soap. Adda toy to center for surprise snowballs or build a snowman. Place soap somewhere to dry for awhile. Decorate with felt, buttons, pipe cleaners, raisins, carrots, infant hats, pine needles, sticks, etc.
Students have been out of school enjoying winter break, and there’s still another six days to go. As temperatures dip into the teens and 20s, and snow remains elusive, kids are either reaching ever increasing levels and high-scores on popular video games, making ever deeper indentations on the family sofa as they watch yet one more episode of Good Luck Charlie or Phineas and Ferb, or driving their siblings and/or parents up a wall out of sheer boredom.
Few things are as looked forward to after months of class work as winter vacation. After the gifts under the tree are opened, and the wrappings are but a memory, it's only a matter of time before parents and kids alike are ready to try something new.
Board and card games
While kids enjoy video games, and can even improve spacial and cognitive abilities and visual attention skills, they are weak when it comes to improving communication skills. Parents can help balance things out by teaching kids simple board and card games on days like these.
One of the easiest, checkers, can even be a craft project, Berny Unruh with the Barton County Extension Service said. Kids can weave together two contrasting colors of paper cut into strips to create a simple checkerboard, eight squares by eight squares. Just about any item can be used for checkers--buttons, pennies and nickels, pieces of paper even. Each player needs 12 identical pieces. Basic rules can be found at various sites on the internet.
Card games, too, are social and can teach organization and math skills, and are a handy thing to know how to play.
Snowmen without snow
Unruh has several ideas which she keeps on hand. Some will make it into the various craft classes offered through the Great Bend Recreation Center and 4-H clubs. She and colleagues also offer them as rainy day resources for 4-H camp counselors. Since Great Bend was cheated out of a white Christmas this year, one idea would be to focus on snow and snow men and all the cool things you could make with a little bit of nothing, Unruh suggested.
There’s no need to go shopping for supplies. Simply gather up items from around the house and make snowmen out of pipe cleaners or three empty tin cans. Or, use play dough or soap snowballs to create the perfect snowman. (See sidebar for recipes to make these at home.)
And then make snowmen pretzel rods to eat. Find the recipe at http://spoonful.com/recipes/crunchy-snowman. Marshmallow snowmen are easy to make to, and are a sweet complement to a cup of hot chocolate. They can be made easily with marshmallows glued together with melted chocolate and decorated with little bits of candy and chow mein noodles.
But if the kids are suffering from cabin fever, today and tomorrow, Friday, Dec. 28, the Great Bend Recreation Center offers Kids Day Out at the Activity Center at 2715 18th St. from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.. Openings are still available,
