Around this time of year, many parents are hearing those two words that strike fear in even the best of them: snow day! What’s a parent to do? In some parts of the country, the kids could go out and play in the snow, but the temperatures – many say due to the earth’s global warming – are extremely low and a child, or adult, should only be outside in below freezing temperatures for about 20 minutes at a time. This is hardly enough time to satisfy an active child.

Many parents are not to happy with allowing their children to sit for hours in front of the television watching cartoons or in front of the computer playing video games, even the educational ones because the children could become lazy and too much sitting around could also lead to childhood obesity.

To combat the ‘sitting around’ many parents think of fun activities they could do with their children and one of the more fun activities is to break out some cookie cutters and make several different cookies for the upcoming days for lunchbox snacks, after school snacks, or before bed snacks.

Kids love to help mom or dad in the kitchen and to make something they will enjoy eating, like cookies, are even more fun for them. A parent could allow even the youngest of toddlers to pour – with their parents help –some of the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. With children that are a little older, they could help with the measuring, which offers a great learning opportunity for numbers and math skills. A child should be at least 10 or older and have an adult present to operate the oven and this should not be a steadfast rule for some 10-year-olds are responsible and others are not.

If a parent finds that the snow day has snuck up on them and they do not have all the ingredients necessary to make cookies, there are other things kids and their parents can do with cookie cutters. For example, various Mickey Mouse cookie cutters could be used on construction paper as templates for cutting out the outline of Mickey Mouse and then decorate the construction paper with sequins, ‘goggle’ eyes or colored markers.