Children always look forward to snow days but when it is cold but there isn’t any snow or only a smattering it isn’t always  as enticing.

My children love playing with ice – so we often leave water in their water table or allow rain water to collect in containers.  They are always keen to go outside on icy day to investigate how solid the ice is and I often find strange deposits of ice in my freezer.

On New Years Eve, it snowed.  In the morning there was a smattering of snow left on the ground and the girls headed out to make tiny snow men.  They took carrots from the fridge and borrowed our dogs Santa hat.

In the haze of a tired New Years Day afternoon, my youngest asked if we could go for a walk. We headed along the trail. She started to make a snowball, it was quite big and heavy .

We continued along the trail and found a stick. The snowball was the perfect place to store it.

The stick was perfect for knocking snow from the branches of trees that were just out of reach.

We started to roll the snowball.

“Maybe we could roll it back to the house and use it to make a snowman”  my daughter suggested.

It seemed a good idea at the time but rolling an ice impacted snowball uphill and sometimes through patches without snow was the best new year’s exercise I’ve had in a long time.

We had a base for a very dirty snowman.

We added a middle.

and a head.

The finished result.

Proof that you don’t need a lot of snow to have fun.

It has stayed cold all week, so the snow hasn’t melted and even the little snowmen are still there.  Last winter we visited the storm pond when it was icy.  the children tried to break the ice with sticks but it wasn’t thick enough to stand on.

This week for the first time it has been frozen enough to stand on and even get the sledges out.  Every day after school, the girls would meet their friends at the pond. Convinced that it was solid, I allowed my daughter to use her ice-skates on the pond. This was a first for all of us and very exciting.

My youngest found a flat round piece of ice that looked like a puck – if the weather stays cold it would be fun to find sticks and play ice hockey or grab a broom and a big piece of ice for curling.  Much better than when we tried a Winter Olympics without any snow!