Maybe you have young children, maybe you are babysitting for grandkids. Maybe you are running out of things to keep the kids busy on a snow day home from school. Winter poses some special challenges because kids cannot spend as many hours outside playing -- at least not without risking frostbite. Here are a few ideas to keep them occupied.

1. Make homemade ice cream. Amazingly, people still eat ice cream even in cold weather.
2. Make cookies. Simple sugar cookies are ideal for decorating with holiday designs. And then you can take a plate to a neighbor or someone you do not see often enough.
3. Visit the airport just to watch planes take off and land. Keep count of different airlines.
4. Have a picnic on the living room floor.
5. If you have a supply of fabric paint or fabric crayons, decorate some tee shirts or pillow cases.
6. Build robot out of empty boxes of cereal, oatmeal, etc.
7. Work on stamp collection.
8. Build model project. Hobby shops have cars, ships, lunar modules and much more.
9. Make popcorn, popcorn balls, or caramel corn.
10. Build a snowman, snow fort, snow bear, snow turtle or other animals.
11. Scavenger hunt time -- possibly an item for each letter of the alphabet. Moms can use this opportunity to have the kids find stuff missing for months.
12. Ice skate. Do you have a public rink nearby?
13. Make family silhouettes. Use a bright lamp to project the face profile onto a piece of white paper (tape paper to the wall). You can cut out the silhouette and paste onto poster board or contrasting paper. Remember to put the date on it.
14. Crossword puzzle time. Dollar stores sometimes have crossword puzzle books for all levels and you could keep a few on hand for rainy days or waiting rooms.
15. Play miniature golf indoors, aiming balls into empty Pringle tubes lying on their sides. Or even croquet if you have some cork pieces to stick the hoop ends into.
16. Make a birthday flag for a child with a birthday coming up, or for the next holiday.
17. Play a board game that everyone can enjoy: Monopoly, Scrabble, Rummy Royal, Chutes n Ladders, etc.
18. You must have a jigsaw puzzle around somewhere.
19. Make up a story. One person starts the story, talking for three minutes. Use a timer. Next person continues the story. Go around the circle two or three times, or as long as you can keep it going.
20. Collage creations. Let the kids cut up old magazine pictures and paste them onto paper or poster board. Make up a theme or story illustrated by the cutouts.
21. Break out the Play-Doh and sculpt for fun. Do not eat. Or make your own edible playdoh out of 1/2 C peanut butter, 1/2 C honey, 1 C powdered milk.
22. Read aloud to your children. Low tech but always a goodie.
23. Look thru photo albums or movies n videos of vacations. Let the kids laugh at your high school yearbook.
24. Sing along with a radio or CD. Or ditch the recording and just sing fave folk songs. Feel free to add your own verses.
25. Nerf bowling night. Use empty cereal boxes or paper towel tubes for pins.
26. Make a pizza from scratch. Tomato sauce, mushrooms, chopped peppers or onions or olives, pineapple, cheese, etc. Experiment.
27. Mobile time. Make a mobile with paper cut-outs or shells or old valentines on a hanger. Or snowflake cut-outs; you remember how to make those, right?
28. Color a picture to send to grandma.
29. Pull out the Lincoln Logs or blocks and build a village, T-rex, or car.
30. Play 20 Questions. Think of a famous person and have others guess who you are thinking of.
31. Ball game time. If you have nerf balls for indoor use, good. Otherwise, we have improvised with balloons of different shapes and sizes for balloon baseball.
32. Have a game of Charades or Guesstures.
33. Listen to records or CDs, dance on the dance floor.
34. Another collage creation: this time with rice, noodles, dried beans, cereal, old buttons or sewing scraps. Add paint if child is old enough to handle a small brush.
35. Stringing macaroni necklaces for younger kids. Needle-work projects for children at least 7 or 8 years old.
36. String popcorn and drape it on a tree for the birds to eat.
37. Puppet making. Old socks or lunch bags will work. Glue on pieces of felt or eyes.
38. Did you pick any wild flowers over the summer? Did you press them in books or presses? You can now take them out of the presses and glue them onto your collages. Older kids can stick a wire into the flower backs and secure it with hot-glue.
39. Draw up a family tree. This might be a follow-up to the looking-thru-family-albums item.
40. Jog up and down the stairs.
41. Not just for turkeys anymore. Trace outlines of hands and draw funny animals out of the shapes.
42. Design a flower bed for spring and summer. Even if you live in an apartment.
43. Read poems aloud. Write your own verses.
44. Scrapbook project time. Even if you just gather desired items for different pages without actually gluing anything, you will have gotten something done. Group related items together into sandwich bags or old envelopes. Collect your concert ticket stubs and programs together, or pictures of a family reunion.
45. If the snow has really piled up outside, try making a snow cave. Pile up snow and tamp it down for a dense mass, then tunnel into it.
46. Potato prints on grocery bag paper.
47. If you can get to the library, check out DVDs, story books, CDs, and more how-to craft books.
48. Write a family newspaper -- just one story or a front page. Interview a snowman. Everyone gets to write their own column, and with a byline. Wow.
49. Make caramel apples.
50. Jump rope. Cut up an old clothesline if you do not have jump ropes. If there is room in the basement or other room, demonstrate how double dutch works.
51. Snowflake cut-outs can also be inserted between layers of clear contact paper for coasters.
52. Finger paint onto freezer paper with chocolate pudding. Lick fingers clean.
53. Go sledding. Radio Flyer or bobsled or saucer, your choice. Dad says he remembers using barrel staves to ski with, kind of. You really have to have great balance to use barrel staves.
54. Have a Hawaiian themed party or dinner. On the living room floor. Pretend it is 85 degrees and sunny.