What better way to celebrate winter then to build some sort of snow shelter. I began doing research in December so that when we had adequate snowfall I would be ready to build with the kiddos. I should mention that my husband knows how to build snow shelters but I thought it might be fun to suprise him with one that my son & I built before he came home from work!
Well January came and went but I never got it together to build a snow shelter.
Luckily we had a parent volunteer offer to come build a snow shelter for the kids at Nature Preschool. So this afternoon she came and made a snow cave in an existing snow bank, which will be be big enough for 2-3 kids to play inside together. We also mounded the snow up for a good size quinzee. Luckily my husband came by after work to help us make a sizeable pile of snow. The mound will sit over night tonight to settle, and the parent volunteer and I will dig it out (hopefully) before the children arrive tomorrow morning. It kind of felt like an Amish barn-raising since in all we had 5 adults and 3 kids making our snow shelter become a reality.
My son also got into digging but he focused more on making a volcano at the top of a snow bank, rather than at the base. I told him it looked more like a snow chair to me, but he assured me that it was indeed a volcano!
I think the Nature Preschool kids are going to be really excited to check out the snow shelters. Fingers crossed that the moning temps are warm enough to spend time outside!
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A couple of resources that I found helpful in researching snow shelters:
The book, "How to Build an Igloo and Other Snow Shelters", is chock full of great ideas.
And this website lists one mans attempt at different snow buildings-
http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/winter/igloo.html
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