One of the many cool things about homeschooling is that during recess, the kids get to play in their own yards with their own stuff. During the winter, my kids love to create “forts” in our backyard. They each have their own and then the neighbor kids come over after school and create their own forts, also in our yard. The green carpet stuff you see above is where we put outdoor carpet down to cover the dirt spot where our pool goes in the summer.
Here’s a couple more views of the forts:
Another fun thing we tried this year is making colored ice to play with and decorate the forts with. I got the idea from someone online who filled balloons with colored water, let them freeze, and then took the balloons off to create colored ice balls. Someone else had used cardboard milk cartons to freeze ice bricks and make an igloo. We tried making one brick but it took a really long time to freeze, even in very cold weather. I don’t have any balloons, either, so I created my own variations.
I initially tried using a foam egg carton and that worked OK, but this works much better. We have a stained wood deck and I’m concerned that the food coloring could stain the deck, so we have a pan underneath and they can’t play with the colored ice on the deck in case we get a melt. I think the food coloring may possibly stain the plastic ice tray, but it’s our spare one and I think that once it’s washed, it won’t color future “normal” ice.
The kids use them to decorate their forts and my 3 year old loves to just play with the ice.
What do your kids like to do outside in the snow?
Amy Lynn Simon 
Very nice Amy! Looks like good winter fun. As for our little guy, his version of winter fun is fast becoming snowboarding. I am really enjoying passing it on to him and really look forward to the day that he’s big enough to go to a real ski hill. For now, he says it’s his favorite sport, which is good enough for me…gotta love those kids!