Stuck Inside? Check Out These Winter Craft Ideas

Oakland Township kids enjoyed extra time off this week when Rochester Community Schools closed for two consecutive days due to snow and dangerous road conditions.

Frigid temperatures and arctic wind chills also made playing outside extremely dangerous, and the icy roads made traveling all but impossible.

To battle cabin fever, Michelle Prill, owner and director of the , recommends keeping busy with projects.

Over the 30 years she's directed the center, Prill has learned to adapt to the unpredictable Michigan weather, often using it to her advantage in her crafts and projects. Here are some of her favorite winter crafts to keep parents and kids occupied on snow days.

Use what nature gave you

"We bring the snow in," Prill said. "We will make snow ice cream, and we paint with it."

Prill says mixing powdered paint with snow for "snow painting" projects can be fun for kids. She also suggests filling spray bottles with water and food coloring to spray onto the snow (or onto a "rainbow snowman"), weather permitting.

"We also do things with icicles, watching it melt," Prill said.

"We'll also take a pie tin and toss sequins and a string in, and then we'll set them outside and freeze them ... you can hang those around outside."

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

"We do a lot of things with recycling," Prill said. "We'll turn different things into art projects. Teachers are quite inventive in what they do."

For one of the many craft projects lining the walls at the learning center, Prill had some of her students bring in old magazines and toy store ads. They cut out the photos of the things they wanted for Christmas and pasted them onto a stocking-shaped piece of paper.

"One thing you can do, too, is you can use contact paper" to stick items to a flat surface like a window. Shredded leftover tissue paper can be sprinkled onto the clear contact paper to create a colorful, festive confetti display.

Read a book

"A great resource is the ," said Prill, who often uses books and magazines like The Mailbox to come up with project ideas. She says there are plenty of books that are "full of ideas of things that (parents) can do with their children."

Countless websites are also devoted to kids crafts, and running a simple internet search can yield hundreds of results for project ideas.

Don't be afraid to get messy

"Shaving cream is great fun for kids," Prill said. "We call that 'snow,' too, and they make snow mountains out of it." Not only is shaving cream relatively easy to clean up, but it also often smells nice.

Washable markers and paint also can be a parent's best friend. Carson Walker, 3, spent part of his Monday morning at the Goodison Learning Center painting a picture with his favorite color.

"I'm painting that for my brother," he said as he smeared orange paint across the page with a large brush.

If you have photos of your favorite winter crafts, email editor Jen Anesi at Jen.Anesi@Patch.com and we will add them to the photo gallery. Or, simply add photos yourself by clicking "add."