Here in Chicago it’s currently -20 degrees Fahrenheit… and the kids are home from school.

We are trapped together in the house for two days with only our wits and… a lot of toys and games. What is a family to do?

Enter “Snowy Day Activity Cards”.

What you will need:

• A good color printer
• Card stock
• A desktop publishing tool (I used the free, open source tool, Scribus)
• A way to make the cards (so many options here, but I used MTG Card Maker)
• Scissors
• Old Magic cards (optional)
• Card sleeves (optional)

How to make the cards:

I began my journey here, which is a great resource in general for making Magic the Gathering proxies (but that’s for a later post).

There are good templates to download for Scribus and Photoshop here.

If you use Scribus, like I did, it is incredibly simple:

• Design the card as you like, using MTG Card Maker (or something similar)
• Open up the template file (“Scribus Template (8 Images).sla”)
• Right-click any of the rectangles on the page and choose “Get image” and grab the image you created
• Once you’ve done all eight images, print it out on cardstock
• Cut out the images and drop each card into a sleeve (for a tougher card, slip an old magic card — lands are great for this — into the back of the sleeve)
• Spread ’em out and show them to the kids!

Card Ideas

Some of the ideas we came up with:

• Legos with dad
• Reading Fort
• Nerf War
• Puzzle time
• Tablet time
• Clay building
• Coloring station
• Writing stories
• Movie night
• Design a board game
• Treasure Hunt!

How to use the cards

Lay out the cards on the floor for the kids to see. Talk to them about all the wonderful options you have for activities for the day. Let them choose the first one!

My goal with this was to hold things like screen time and computer time over their heads until they had completed at least one card.