Snow days with kids

I have three kids, all of whom are now officially teenagers. I am very fortunate to work from home, so when we have weather-related school closings, the combination of their "advanced" age and my flexible schedule makes me well suited to cope with the schedule change. But it wasn't always that way. When they were younger, I worked at a newspaper, which was flexible in the sense that I could take them with me on assignments (yeah, you try interviewing the troops who just returned from Iraq while your three elementary schoolers run wild around the Armory) and I also worked at Micron, a semiconductor manufacturer that was not in any way flexible. At Micron, I could neither take the kids in or work from home. I just had to take an unplanned personal day, and that was the kind of thing my  supervisor would passive-aggressively hold over my head whenever possible. That job didn't last long, but while it did, I learned to appreciate the great value of flexible jobs and the opportunity to work from home.

So for those of you with children still living at home who are impacted by the vagaries of winter weather, I have put together a few suggestions of things you can do to keep your kids busy while they are stuck at home.

• Babysitting. Have older kids offer their babysitting services to other families. It is particularly nice if your teenage children are already CPR-certified and have some experience with younger kids (like cousins), but when winter weather threatens, you can start putting the word out to your local friends with smaller kids who you know will be inconvenienced by school closings. You can post on Facebook or email your friends: "I have a 15 year-old, CPR certified, available to babysit at your house or mine in the event of school closure tomorrow."
• Helping. Prepare a list of chores for the kids, and if you would like more enthusiastic participation, attach dollar amounts to each activity. For example: "Shovel driveway, $20. Clean cat litter box, $5. Alphabetize bookshelves by author, $10. Organize your closet and remove unwanted items for Goodwill, $5." The more mercenary your children, the more stuff you will get done.
• Baking. You can guide the kids or have them do it themselves. With older children, I can now direct my kids to a recipe and just offer guidance while they do the work. It wasn't always this way, but even younger kids can manage a recipe from a mix, like sugar cookies. You can have them assemble and cut the dough, but you will probably have to help roll it out and put it into and take it out of the oven. Kids can spend a lot of time decorating cookies with either a simple homemade frosting (a stick of butter, a box of powdered sugar, a splash of milk and some food coloring) or frosting from a can.
• Working. When my son has a snow day, he sometimes helps my husband at work. We have the flexibility to do this since we are both self-employed. My son can carry ladders and climb up in attics. It keeps him busy and he also earns a little money. I also have some simple paperwork and organizational tasks with which the kids can help.
• Exercising. I don't like to bill this activity as "exercise" to the kids, but I do like to see them doing something active, especially when they are stuck inside all day. Since I have a ton of fitness equipment, I can encourage them to "play" with my resistance bands, mini-treadmill, stability ball and indoor trampoline. We also have some active video games like Just Dance, which they will do for about half an hour at a time.
• Reading. My kids don't need a lot of encouragement to sink into a book, but it helps to have a well-stocked bookcase, or a Kindle. We have four Kindles in our house and they are all on the same account, so when one of us buys a book, we all have access to it. That means we have a ready supply of books at hand, at any time. If your kids need some guidance about what to read, there are many recommended reading lists online. For older teens, I like the BBC's "The Big Read" of top 100 books, or NPR's list of 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels. The New York Public Library's list of 100 Great Children's books has a good variety of titles for toddler through teen.
• Playing. When my youngsters were younger, I lived in town and I could usually get out and about within a few hours of the snow ending, but much of my county was rural, which meant schools may be closed for several days. During these long stretches of school-less-ness, my mom-friends and I would make an effort to trade kids for several hours at a time. We arranged play dates in the late morning--on Tuesday, I would take my kids' to Susie's house for three hours while I got some stuff done. On Wednesday, her kids would come to my place, and so it went. Even if I had five kids at my house instead of my normal three, they would all be involved with one another and less in need of my interaction, so I could manage a conference call, or write a few emails while keeping one eye on the kids.

I know from experience that snow days can throw an unexpected monkey wrench into your working life, but these years pass so fast. Before you know it, your former toddlers are applying for colleges and hoping to spend their snow days at their boyfriends' houses (not), so make the best of the little ones while you can.