Last night I attended our Salt Lake Home Educators monthly meeting. I am the treasurer and it's membership renewal time, so last night I collected lots of dues and will be making and sending out membership cards by the end of the month.
Yesterdays topic was "snow school", so everyone contributed fun ideas on how to have fun outside (and inside) for the winter. Here in Salt Lake City, we get lots of snow in the winter and have approx. 6 ski resorts with a 1/2 hour to 45 minute drive.
A fellow member & our newsletter editor Lisa who works at the Ski School up at Snowbird during the winter is getting a homeschool group together for ski/snowboard lessons. She takes her kids with her to work and they get to ski all day, how fun is that! They are also on race teams, so they get lots of practice time in with not having to be in school all day. I haven't asked Damek if he's interested yet, but I will as soon as he gets up today.
Some other ideas were making snow sculptures. One lady talked about how her dad used to pile big mounds of snow and pack it down and then make sculptures out of it. A few he made with the kids help were the Eifel Tower, Abraham Lincoln & George Washingtons faces, & the Empire State Building. We talked about sledding, places to go to snowshoe & cross country ski, winter hikes on paved trails or packed snow & even full moon hikes at night.
There was also talk about the science behind snowflakes and our web administrator Stephanie brought a handout from snowcrystals.com that shows the morphology of a snowflake. She talked about how under the right conditions, you can see large flakes complete with hexagonal symmetry, and that she saw 5mm flakes last year. She also said that it's best to take something dark outside to catch snowflakes with, such as a piece of fabric or cardboard. Stephanie also brought a book titled 'The Snowflake'
by Kenneth G. Libbrecht. He also has other books titled 'The Art of The Snowflake', 'The Little Book Of Snowflakes', & 'Field Guide To Snowflakes'. There was talk about snowflake Bentley, a snow scientist, and the true book about his life titled 'Snowflake Bentley'
. He grew up in Vermont and as a child was fascinated with snowflakes. Later he was able to study snowflakes under high powered microscopes and he took some amazing photos of them as well.
Lisa said her family has a yearly ritual of making a "snow" cake on the day of the first snow (which we've already had), which consists of white cake, white frosting, marshmallows & coconut.
Spending more time indoors in the winter people had suggestions for snuggling up by a fire (if you have a fireplace), and our coordinater Alyssa talked about how her family likes to get out modeling dough and beeswax and warm it over candle flames and how they like to play with & mold the dough & wax while listening to stories being read aloud. Of course having hot chocolate, coffee or chai after you've spent a great deal of time outside is always nice. My friend Melissia mentioned awhile back to me that they were getting some indoor swings that will mount in a doorway for their girls to swing on during the winter, and they also bring in their big plastic slide as well.
After hearing all the fun ideas people had, I'm excited for winter to come. Although we gotta get through Halloween first, and as soon as I publish this post, I'm off to sew up Kyan's bat costume as we're going to 'Garden After Dark' tonight when Lee get's home.
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