With milder weather in the forecast for the rest of this week, Neverending Winter Break 2014 might indeed come to an end tomorrow. The temperatures are not quite as cold as they were yesterday, when the district decided to cancel school for a second day today due to the extreme cold.
Barrington 220 schools will let us know the verdict by the end of the day. In the meantime, we’ve been collecting ideas from our readers for ways to spend a Barrington 220 Cold/Snow Day and have come up with a list of 16 clever and fun recommendations complete with photos and videos!
Everyone who submitted a suggestion was entered into a drawing for two tickets to see a movie at the Catlow Theater. We just drew our winner and her name is Laura Loppnow who submitted the first on our list of 16 Things to do on a Barrinton 220 Cold/Snow Day. You can’t go wrong trying any of these fun activities on what could very well be our LAST DAY of winter break…
1. “Make snowmen out of old socks! It’s a fun and easy craft reusing things around the house. You’ll need a longer sock, rubber bands, buttons, glue, rice and fabric scraps.”
– Submitted by Laura Loppnow
2. “Playing ball on the stairs with cousins.”
– Submitted by Anne Schmitt
3. “Have an indoor SPA day! Fill up large pots with warm water, add some bath salts/bubble bath. After soaking your feet, grab some foot lotion and nail polish. Oh, and also listen to Enya / relaxation music at the same time.”
– Submitted by Sheila Soss
4. “Giant frozen marbles. Fill balloons with water and add food coloring. Once frozen, cut the balloons off and they look like giant marbles or Christmas decorations. Its really fun to do, easy, and successful. Mine are currently outside freezing.”
– Submitted by Nicole Danca
5. “Have fun making homemade stuffed animal friends out of old socks!”
– Submitted by Amy Olsen
6. “We will spend our day doing weather experiments like the one in the video below from yesterday featuring Julia Giacomin (8th grade Station), Mary Kitzman (8th grade Station) and Annie Beaubien (9th grade BHS). We boiled water and then threw it in the frigid outside air to watch it crystallize. It was awesome. We then took our time to learn the science behind this.
Scientific explanation we researched…
Meteorologist Eric Holthaus lit up the Internet today with this experiment. He walked out of his Viroqua, Wis., home and threw a cup of boiling water into -21°F air. Here’s what happened:
Yep. It turned into ice crystals before it hit the ground. What’s counter-intuitive is if you threw a cup of ice-cold water, it would fall to the ground still a liquid. Why?
Live Science asked Mark Seeley, a climatologist at the University of Minnesota, to explain the phenomenon. He said:
“When it’s cold outside, there’s hardly any water vapor present in the air, whereas boiling water emits vapor very readily that’s why it’s steaming. When you throw the water up in the air, it breaks into much smaller droplets, so there’s even more surface for water vapor to come off of.
“Now, cold air is very dense, and this makes its capacity to hold water vapor molecules very low. There’s just fundamentally less space for the vapor molecules. So when you throw the boiling water up, suddenly the minus 22 air has more water vapor than it has room for. So the vapor precipitates out by clinging to microscopic particles in the air, such as sodium or calcium, and forming crystals. This is just what goes into the formation of snowflakes.”
Who said cold/snow days were not educational?!!!
– Submitted by Mary Beaubien
7. “Science experiments! Our first grader loves science and what a unique environment we have right now for observations and experiments . Today we threw boiling water into the freezing air to make “snow”. We also blew bubbles and watched how they turned solid. Our son’s favorite was watching a water bottle freeze instantly outside. A little fun with the cold weather on our bonus days off.”
– Submitted by Jessie Erickson
8. “My daughter Ashley had read about a science experiment in which boiling water is thrown into the air. In these super cold temperatures, she had heard that the water would vaporize or turn to snow before it hit the ground. I was, um, skeptical.
She boiled the water and threw cup after cup from a balcony.
It worked exactly as she said it would. I just took the video.”
– Submitted by Doug McConnell
9. “Baking muffins!!!!”
– Submitted by Caroline Naylor
10. “ummm, watching movies”
– Submitted by Jennifer Bulander
11. “Use some Marriott points and go swimming at the hotel with the kids. Order some food to the room. While my wife swims with the kids, I can keep up with a little work with their wifi.”
– Submitted by Bob Williams
12. “Build robots and electrical circuits.”
– Submitted by John Landenberger
13. “Puzzles!”
– Submitted by Fabiola Aguillon
14. “Latch hook kit. WonderArt”
– Submitted by Fabiola Aguillon
15. “Organize your home library.”
– Submitted by Fabiola Aguillon
16. “Create a Masterpiece!”
– Submitted by Katie Blackowicz
Whatever you choose to do today, we hope you STAY WARM! Though all of this time off has been fun, I think my own kids are ready for a return to school and a little more structure in their daily lives. Is it too early to long for spring? Mark your calendars, folks! Winter ends and spring begins on Thursday, March 20th, 2014. (sigh)
