These are the snow days that try parents’ souls.

The kids are off for one or two days, maybe more. It’s really cold and it’s just going to get colder.

I don’t know about your kids, but mine put on layers of winter gear to go sledding Sunday and trooped back in a half hour later, cold and grumpy.

Most of us let our kids have more screen time on days like this; there’s no shame in that. But even when you’re working from home, it’s easy to weave in a few fun hands-on activities that make a snow day feel special and memorable.

Bring the snow inside

Fill a shallow plastic bin or baking dish with snow, bring it inside and let kids take their favorite toys into a miniature winter wonderland. Paw Patrol snow rescue. Dinosaurs tromping through the snow. Barbie dolls building a snowman.

This activity kept my kids entertained for long stretches when they were little. Just be sure to put a large towel or plastic tablecloth under the bin to catch any flying snow the dinosaurs kick up.

Kids also love painting the snow with diluted food coloring or water colors.

And if you’re opposed to bringing snow into the house, mix a little hair conditioner into corn starch to make a substance that looks a lot like snow.

Bring water outside

Fill a balloon with water, put a few drops of food coloring inside, tie it shut and put it out in the snow to freeze. Repeat with other colors. When the water has frozen, cut off the balloon and admire your beautiful colored ice globes. Leave them outside or bring them into the sink or bathtub and let kids pour hot water or salt on them to experiment with melting.

A variation of this my kids invented yesterday is to fill up disposable baking trays with colored water and then later pop out large colored tiles of ice.

They could also freeze some small toys in a block of ice, bring it in and excavate the toys in the sink.

Freeze bubbles

This week’s frigid weather is perfect for making ice bubbles.

Dig out your summer bubble bottles and blow bubbles outside. Try to blow them up, so they have more time to freeze before they drift down. It’s fascinating to see crystals of ice spread across a bubble.

If you don’t have ready-made bubble solution around, there are lots of recipes online to make your own.

Unleash their inner mad scientist

My kids were obsessed with this in preschool and early elementary school.

Take a muffin tin and put a few drops of food coloring in each compartment. Vary the colors. Mix colors. Get wild with it. Then put about a half cup of baking soda on top, completely covering the dye.

Next give your child a little cup of vinegar and a spoon or eye dropper to drip it onto the baking soda. As the baking soda and vinegar fizz, the color emerges. You could speed it up by letting kids just pour the vinegar in the muffin tin, but it’s more suspenseful to drip it in — and it builds fine motor control.

This gets messy, so we usually did it in the bathtub.

Make art with unusual materials

Warning: This can get super messy, so build in some time to clean the bathtub afterwards.

Squirt white shaving cream in a disposable plastic cup and stir in food coloring. Repeat until you have a rainbow of paints. Then get your kids in the bath, hand them some paintbrushes and let them go to town.

My kids did this on a snowy day about seven years ago and still talk about how much fun it way.

For tiny ones who might be tempted to taste the shaving cream, make an edible paint by mixing food coloring with vanilla yogurt.

Make snow ice cream and snowballs

Do this one quick before the snow sits around too long. Fill a cup with untouched snow and pour some sweetened condensed milk on top to make snow cream. Or drizzle maple syrup on the snow, like Pa in “Little House in the Prairie.”

I scored major points with my kids a few years ago by buying a bottle of egg custard syrup from Baltimore’s own Koldkiss, and we made snowballs out of real snow.

The old standbys

Bake cookies. Make paper snowflakes. Play with a holiday gift that hasn’t gotten love yet. Make Valentine’s Day cards. Read. Make scented hearts from cinnamon salt dough. Do a puzzle. Make a collage. Bring a treat to an elderly neighbor. Build a blanket fort. Make a pinecone bird feeder with peanut butter and bird seed. Read some books.

Do you have more ideas? Please share them in the comments. Hope you have a happy snow day!