Before the blizzard started Friday, I ordered Chinese food for lunch—and for leftovers for our snowed-in weekend.
My fortune cookie should have said, “Your children will not return to school until February.”
OK, so that might be a bit of a stretch, but I think there’s a good chance they won’t go back this week.
Do you hear them complaining? I don’t. They really like their school, but they also love being home.
For the record, I’m not complaining either…yet. We’re enjoying having the whole family off together. We don’t often take the time just to be here, the four of us. That won’t last. Cabin fever will set in. Also, at some point John and I will need to return to work. Then you’ll find me making child care arrangements and grumbling a bit about the lack of routine.
But for now? We’re playing in the snow.
There are mountains of snow out there. The snowballs are ready made, ripe for throwing. The children climb and try to run and fall and laugh and get up and keep trying. Then they come inside, totally exhausted, eat well, and collapse into bed at night.
Today, even though the ground is covered in all this snow, the weather was sunny and even warm. The children were dropping articles of clothing as they played and shoveled and built two forts for the snowball fights we are going to have.
We also did a science experiment, thanks to my friend Abigail who suggested it in a post she wrote about an emergency homeschooling day.
We stripped the paper off of some crayons, placed them gently on the snow, and watched to see which ones sank the lowest into the snow over time. Here’s the link directly to the experiment.
Here they are at the beginning:
Here they are a few hours later (we moved the red crayon at the beginning, so that smudge to the left is due to human error):
I’m afraid I did a terrible job explaining about solar energy, but the good news is that when we do talk about it again later, I will say, “Remember the crayons?” And everyone will remember the crayons.
In case you are wondering, we are hoping the snow won’t melt for a long time. Our kindergartener is very anxious about it. He’s afraid it will all melt away right now. I keep reassuring him that it is going to be here for a while and that, much as I hate to admit it, we may get even more.
And we might. So…uh…yay?
Maybe it will be February when the children go back to school, or maybe it will be March.
As I say, no one under the age of 9 in our house is complaining.
At least they’re happy. They’re eating well, getting good exercise in the snow, and they are learning a few things along the way.
So maybe the fortune cookie should say, “One day you’ll give up and stop worrying about whether your children will ever go back to school.”
Or maybe it should just say, “You’ll forget about those crayons until the lawn mower discovers them in the spring.”