"Snow" Day

[UPDATED below. New photos added of the colorful ice in the outside sunshine]

Sorry, I mean "cold" day. School was canceled today because of low temperatures. That's it. No snow. No ice. But schools were concerned buses were going to have trouble starting and that children would be waiting in the -10F (with windchill) weather for 30+ minutes. My bigger concern would be students who don't have proper clothing for such weather seeing as it's generally not required here. Still, there's not a flake of snow or drop of ice, so it seems rather silly to be home today, but I'm enjoying it nonetheless.

Since we don't get cold weather like this very often, I thought I'd see if we could do "frozen bubbles". I've seen the idea on Pinterest and Facebook a few times- if you blow bubbles when the temperatures are cold enough, they will freeze and act like little balls of glass. Sounds like fun!

I waited until James was down for his morning nap, then we bundled up (Drew has on PJs under a pair of fleece onesie PJs plus a thick coat, scarf, gloves, hat....)

Drew says, "I'm a snowman!"

Unfortunately it's just not cold enough. The bubbles were like normal bubbles. Blowing bubbles just to blow bubbles in single digit temps is kind of silly, so we decided to go back inside. But I did take a moment to show Drew a chunk of ice that was in our grill cover (Jason forgot to put it back on after grilling the other day... yes, the temps here in Georgia are strange!). It had rained a little, so it had collected water that is now frozen. We poked at it, then I took it out and let him slide it around on the ground a bit.

Then I had another Pinterest idea! Salt and food coloring! Of course, apparently this "brilliant" idea took all my smartness with it because we started to experiment outside...

Sprinkling the ice with salt

Then I realized, "it's too cold for this!" so we brought the ice inside, put it in a container, and had some fun. I mixed gel food colors with some water and Drew used a medicine dropper to drop the colored water on the ice (already sprinkled with salt). The effect was very pretty! The ice immediately started to make cracking sounds when we dropped the salt on it, then the food coloring would spread through the tunnels the salt was making.

The watery mixture was actually freezing on the ice, too, which was kind of neat.

Those shiny areas are actually frozen

I showed Drew how the spots where he dropped a lot of salt were sinking down; the salt was "eating" the ice.

That "gooey" looking stuff is frozen!

Then we turned it over and had some more fun.

We had a few spilled cups of dyed water, but Drew said, "let's call this an adventure, Mommy!" so it was worth it. I think more than anything Drew just enjoyed the medicine dropper. This may be fun to try again in the future when he can start to understand the science behind it (which I need to brush up on myself). We put our ice outside to "save" it so Daddy can see it later. I might try and get a picture of it held up to light later... if I feel like getting cold again.

That salt is really eating away at the ice!

Now we are happily being lazy by the fire. I think it's time for some homemade hot chocolate (courtesy of my aunt)!

UPDATE: Photos in the sunshine. These were taken just for fun while the kids were napping in the afternoon, but I really should have brought Drew out to see what it looked like in the sun since you could really see how the colors had melted into the ice. Things always get a little chaotic after naps, though. Anyway, I cropped quite a few of these to get a good close-up view. I think some of them are really pretty!