Well, it’s the perfect time to get the whole family in the mood: Stop on by the Cottage Life Show this weekend (March 30, 31, and April 1) at the International Centre. There’s plenty for kids and families to enjoy at the show:

• The Cottage Wildlife Centre gives an up-close look at some common cottage country critters including the Massassauga rattler, common turtles, snakes, plus birds of prey from Wye Marsh Wildlife Centre. Plan to catch your favourites—check out the Cottage Wildlife Centre schedule.
• Bring your questions for the Toronto Zoo Adopt-A-Pond program and the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre, a unique turtle rehabilitation hospital in the Kawarthas.
• Have you spotted bears at the cottage? The Bear Wise experts tell your family the best way to respond to keep everyone safe.

But that is not all. No, no, that is not all!

• In the Family Activity Centre, families will enjoy nature-themed crafts and our kids camping zone.
• The Tree Planting Zone lets kids select and prepare a white spruce seedling to take home and plant.

Plus, if Mom and Dad need some time to shop solo, The Spring Cottage Life Show offers free child care for up to two hours on Saturday and Sunday, for children aged two and older.

Buy your ticket online and save $2. Kids 12 and under are free.

Hope to see you all there!

DD: Mommy, is that a dock?

Me: No, honey, it’s not, but it looks a bit like a dock doesn’t it? It’s called a pallet.

DD: [Pause] Isn’t that a kind of castle?

Me: [after trying to figure out what she meant for a minute] Ah, a palace! Palace sounds a lot like pallet doesn’t it?

From there, I had to explain the difference in the sounds, and then I went on to tell her about when heavy loads of construction materials, like bricks, are delivered they often come on pallets like the one we’d seen, so that a forklift can unload the truck all at once, and people don’t have to unload it brick by brick. After my long-winded explanation, I asked her as I always do when I think I might have lost her:

Me: Does that make sense?

DD: Yep.

Is it the promise of spring in the air, or maybe just the influence of my working at Cottage Life— do your kids see docks in the middle of the city too?

Have a great weekend!

• Out and about with Ontario Parks: If you’re heading north, there’s lots of fun stuff to do. Our sister publication Explore posted three great ideas for great winter outdoor activities to do this Family Day at Ontario Parks, including Winter in the Wild, a new one-day festival on Saturday at Algonquin Park, stargazing, snowshoeing, a wolf howl, and skating through the woods (cool!). Programs are offered at specific Ontario Parks, so call ahead to see what the park closest to your cottage has planned.

• Get hooked on fishing: This weekend is also winter Family Fishing Weekend, when you can try out ice fishing with the kids without a license. The site features lots of activities around the province to get you started.

• Bird spotting for all ages: Friday through Monday, bird watchers of any experience level can participate in this annual bird tally for the Great Backyard Bird Count. Go for as little as 15 minutes on one or more days of the weekend and participate in Citizen Science in this 15th annual event. It’s easy: count birds at a spot near you (home, the cottage, a local bird destination) using a printable form (you can also print out a list of bird species for your location), tally the highest number of birds of each species seen together at once, and fill out the online checklist. Check out their special page for kids, which includes online games to practice bird id, colouring pages, and puzzles. Read the instructions to do your own tally at home or at the cottage doing a stationary count (or a travelling count if you’re out for a walk). The Wye Marsh in Midland, or any Ontario Park, nature centre, or trail is a good place to go to count birds. The Great Backyard Bird Count is organized by  Bird Studies Canada, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Audubon Society.

Click here for more ideas to keep the troops entertained. Whatever you do, dress warm, and have fun!

Here are some other great ways to develop a love of reading that you may not have thought of as promoting literacy. You’re probably already doing some of these things with your family, but now you can go ahead an do them in the name of literacy:

• Follow a recipe. No matter how old your kids, this is something you can do together. Have them help read the recipe and follow the steps. For really little helpers, sit down with them to “translate” the recipe into pictures, showing the equipment you need, the amounts of each ingredient to measure out, and the steps for combining them. It’s great for developing systematic thinking as well reading numbers and words. Plus, the results are delicious.
• Read a road map. Perfect for the trip to the cottage or ski-hill this weekend. Highlight the route, or get them to do this, depending on their age, and then they can follow along as you pass road signs on the way. They may want to add sticky notes, or draw their own personalized version, to mark their favourite roadside landmarks and stops.
• Write while you pretend. Kids love to play make-believe, but let their imaginations go the next step by having extended conversations while role-playing and including writing or drawing materials they can use while “in character.” It may give them a new way to see writing, and give them more confidence trying out their burgeoning skills “as” someone else.
• Play a board game. Our two-and-a-half-year-old is desperate to play games right now, so we’ve been keeping an eye out for things she can handle. Her favourites are Uno Moo (which is basically Uno, but instead of using cards, this version features little round farm animals), and Monopoly Junior: Lemonade, which we got at a yard sale last summer. (In this version, players make the big bucks by putting up lemonade stands all over town.) I was amazed that she has learned to count the spots on the dice, and then move her player forward the right number of squares, and that she can correctly pay the “bank” to set up her new stands. I’ve gotten to learn a lot about her while she’s been learning too.
• Play word games together on those long drives. Here’s a rhyming game we like to play, even with our young daughter: take turns choosing a word to which everyone can try to add a rhyming word. Start with Pink, for example, and everyone can add to it by chiming in with sink, drink, link, skink, etc.
• Play Rhyming Bingo. I like ABC Life Literacy Canada’s extension on this. They suggest playing a game of Bingo where “participants look for words on their game card that rhyme with the word being called. For example; if the word “float” is called, then players can mark words such as “boat,” “goat,” or “oat” on their game cards. First one with a row wins.”

ABC Life Literacy Canada has lots more ideas for activities promoting fun and learning, such as Simon Says, and scavenger hunts. And if you have family traditions that seem to fit the bill, I’d love to hear about them.

Families can have a blast at the cottage in the wintertime when the conditions are right – skiing, snowshoeing, walks in the snow, campfires by a frozen lake. But sometimes it’s just too cold to be outside or mum and dad simply need a bit of a rest. As a former kindergarten teacher and a mum of three, indoor activities have become a bit of a specialty. My claim to fame at the cottage last summer was keeping five little kids happy and entertained over a long, rainy weekend. Here are a few of my top tips and must-haves:

Play dough. It’s not just for kindergarten! Play dough is a breeze to make yourself (plus it’s non-toxic and economical, which makes it even more cottage friendly!). Once the kids tire of making the inevitable pretend cookies and worms, use play dough with popsicle sticks, twigs and pinecones found in the woods to make cottage dioramas or try a 3D version of Pictionary. Here’s the best recipe I know (and as a former teacher you know I’ve tried them all!):

Play Dough

• 2 cups of plain flour
• 1 cup of salt
• 4 tablespoons of ‘cream of tartar’
• 2 tablespoons of cooking oil
• 2 cups of boiling water with your choice of food colouring added

Just pop it all in a bowl and mix. At first it may seem as though it’s not going to mix, but hang in there! Pop in a ziplock bag or airtight container and store in the fridge for ages (or at room temperature, but make sure it doesn’t freeze if you turn the heat way down while you’re away from the cottage).

Stop at the Dollar Store. Imagine my husband and I and two friends trapped inside the cottage for three days with five kids under six. Outside the weather was a disaster (the kind where your mother in law keeps phoning to see if the cottage has blown away) but inside the adults enjoyed cocktails and laughs as the kids enhanced their usual cottage play with all sort of creative treats from the Dollar Store. Sure, we sang a few campfire songs, took all the cushions off the sofas and built a fort, but what really kept the kids happy?

For about $30 (the best money I’ve spent in a long time) I bought little wooden boxes and non-toxic paint so they could decorate their own little treasure chests (intended for pebbles found on hikes, but of course the weather didn’t cooperate), popsicle sticks and white glue so they could build structures, picture frames or anything else their hearts desired, plus construction paper, markers, crayons, stickers, sparkle glue (a big hit!), pompoms, pipe cleaners, beads, string, little note pads and tape.

The possibilities were endless: necklaces, bracelets, mini fishing rods, murals, surveys and lists, drawings, paintings, and of course taping anything and everything in sight (every parent of a kid under 5 should know that the most exciting stocking stuffer ever is a personal role of masking tape!). And guess what? I’m not even naturally artistic! With the right supplies, carefully doled out when the timing is just right (for goodness sake don’t give them everything at once!), $30 worth of brightly coloured stuff will turn everyone crafty.

Take a deep breath and cook with your kids. Cooking with kids takes twice as long and is at least three times as messy. But kids love to be a part of things and at the cottage, where bedtimes and mealtimes tend to be a little more flexible, kids can be welcome in the kitchen. The best part is not even that kids are happy and entertained by helping out with preparing meals, it’s that they’re more likely to try a new food if they have helped to prepare it. So drag a step stool over to the counter top and let your little ones measure out the flour for pancakes, braise vegetables with olive oil in preparation for grilling, stir the salad dressing or use a not-too-sharp knife to cut some fruit for dessert.

With a bit of organization and a few tools offered by mum or dad, I’ve seen my kids making great memories at the cottage even when they can’t get outside.

Thanks for the ideas, Catherine! Read Catherine’s last post on this blog, about bringing that cottage feeling to the city in the off-season. Visit Catherine’s blog for more great parenting tips.

My 2.5-year old daughter pulled the directory out of my bag and, looking at the cover, asked my husband, “Why are the kids in the water?” They talked about that for a while, and when bedtime came around I asked her, as I always do, what two stories she’d like to read before going to sleep. What did she bring me? The boat show directory.

So, we went through it page by page, talked about all of the pictures (“Look at the dog driving the boat!” I said. “That’s so silly!” she said), counted all the boxes on the map, and looked through the list of show exhibitors, naming all the categories in the alphabetical listing by letter (there’s no category for exhibitors starting with the letter X, as it turns out).

When she crawled into her bed (which had, no surprise, become a boat), she made sure to have her pirate eye-patch nearby.

He sent this to me after the big snow fall we had last week, and thought I’d share it with you:

there is a certain silence that comes with
a snowfall
a dampening of the grinding and clatter and moving about of everyday life
such that
when I stand in my own backyard
encircled by this small stand of evergreens
I can almost imagine I am there.

the lake
quietly receiving billions of infinitely unique crystals
the trees
freshly draped in miniature fluffy white, toddler inspired sandcastles
the air
restoring me with its crispness
watering my eyes
running my nose
putting roses in my baby’s cheeks
and granite
everywhere
resting peacefully beneath it all
waiting for spring.

i miss the cottage.

Thanks for sharing this, Drew! You can read more about Drew’s adventures and thoughts on his blog.

Those big boats are still there, but there are a bunch of other kid-friendly activities if you find yourself looking for a taste of summer in the middle of January.

Some of the highlights for kids include free wakeboarding lessons and demonstrations, paddle-boating for kids, and fishing, kayaking, canoeing for the family. Plus, don’t miss a chance to hear Abby Sunderland—the youngest person ever to sail solo around Cape Horn at age 16, and almost the youngest person to sail around the world (that’s her brother Zac, who will also be there)—and Duma the waterskiing dog (yes, this Jack Russell Terrier not only waterskiis, but drives her owner’s boat too!). Check out the full list of features.

The boat show runs January 14 – 22, 2012. Visit the Toronto International Boat Show website for ticket prices, hours, and location. Kids 16 and under enter free.

I am very fortunate to have lovely in-laws who are very generous with their cottage. As a result, my husband, three kids and I enjoy many of the benefits of cottage life without actually having to own anything. We’re spoiled, I know. And very grateful.

My sons are nearly-five-year-old twins and my daughter is two. My boys have been going to the cottage since they were four months old and my daughter (a typical third child with increasingly lax parents) has been visiting basically since birth. I have to admit, those early weekends at the cottage with the boys weren’t easy. Twin babies mean a lot of equipment and a lot of worries.

Most of the things that I loved about the cottage in my pre-kid days suddenly took on a whole new meaning: a cottage on a cliff, a fire pit on the edge of that cliff, a big, open stone fireplace in the cottage, a long dock out to a deep, deep lake, abundant wildlife…everything felt like an accident waiting to happen. But we kept at it and now my kids think of the cottage as a piece of heaven.

The place is not winterized so about this time of year, once the excitement of Halloween and Christmas have passed, the kids start thinking about what they have to look forward to, and after their birthdays, the next most important thing in their lives is, of course, the cottage.

It’s January 5th today and we likely won’t get up to the cottage until June, but they’ve already started talking about the lake, Granddad’s pontoon boat, their fishing rods, adding to their collection of important cottage memorabilia (pinecones, mostly), campfires (yes, on that cliff) and Kawartha Dairy ice cream.

And so about this time of year, even though the cottage is a bit of a distant (but very fond) memory, I break out the photos from last summer and we play “cottage”. This involves roasting Lego pieces on plastic sticks over a pile of random toys as a campfire and taking canoe rides around the basement in cardboard boxes. Next summer I think I’ll give each child a box to collect a few souvenirs to bring home. That way when they start to feel nostalgic, they can go through their boxes for a bit of a fix and add some authenticity to their afternoons of building pretend campfires on the edge of a pile of sofa cushions.

As we draw close to the end of the year, I thought I’d share a few more cottagey books for kids that have crossed my desk recently.

Pond Babies by Cathryn Falwell is a nice book for the very young in which a mother and her child discover some of the creatures at the pond. It also supplies some tips for getting out and getting your hands dirty in nature with your little one.

Do your little cottagers like to get their hands into more than dirt? How about flour and sugar? Little Kitchen by Sabrina Parrini encourages kids to get into the fun of cooking with 40 recipes that are simple and with end results appealing to small-fry. Lots of desserts and creative mains such as mini-burgers, breakfast pies, and home-made gnocchi. Instructions clearly indicate when a grown-up’s help is needed, and each recipe has an illustrated list of equipment needed.

In The Very Itchy Bear, by Nick Bland, The Very Cranky Bear returns, this time made ornery by a flea. Great illustrations bring the plight of this poor guy to life.