Attention: All Custodians of (Nine-Year-Old) Kids!
This is a must-do activity that requires about thirty bucks and a cooler. Do a Google search for "dry ice" in your area, call a supplier up and get directions (it's probably going to be an ice cream truck supplier located in some decaying industrial part of town), bring your cooler and buy fifty pounds of dry ice. Yeah, that's right, fifty pounds! That way you and your kids can play all day without fear of running out too soon. Put on your winter mittens and drop chunks into everything that will hold liquid! Make a stream in the backyard with a garden hose and set chunks in it for a spooky effect! Place little edibles like grapes and raspberries and candy bars in the cooler and then take them out and eat them (careful: they get so cold they stick to the roof of your mouth)! Freeze a flower and shatter it! With a spoon, carve a little cup into a block of dry ice, pour a drop of water into the cup, and watch it freeze before your eyes! Breathe on the frozen drop and watch it grow fur!
Best of all, watch your kids turn into frenetic little scientists for the day, doing all manner of wacky experiments.
Careful, of course, not to touch dry ice with bare skin, or breathe too much of the "smoke" (carbon dioxide gas, part of what we exhale). Play outside or in a well-ventilated area. Supervise the urchins... believe me, you'll become one of them!
