You have just tucked your child into bed when she points at the window.

"Look!" she says with excitement. "It's starting to snow!" Her eyes light up with the anticipation of warm cocoa, plans for a snow fort and new ways to dress a snowman.

"Oh, no." Your response is decidedly less enthusiastic. You imagine icy roads, wet boots on the carpet and the dog walking into a snowdrift.

Both you and your daughter are wondering the same thing: Will there be a snow day tomorrow? What are we going to do all day?

But being snowbound doesn't have to be boring or stressful. You can turn your weather-imposed closeness into a celebration. Here are 10 tips for turning a snow day into together time:

1. Have an all-white day. Encourage everyone in the house to wear white. Prepare your family all-white meals like oatmeal with milk for breakfast and chicken breast, mashed potatoes and cauliflower for dinner.
2. Make snow-themed treats with your children. Bake your favorite cookies and add a dusting of powdered sugar "snow" on top. Make marshmallow snowmen using candies for eyes, raisins for buttons and pretzel sticks for arms.
3. Read about Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley. Virginia mom Karen Cole, owner of BigLearning.com, suggests the book Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and the Snowflake Bentley website (http://snowflakebentley.com). In 1885, Bentley became the first person to photograph individual snowflakes; in his lifetime, he took pictures of more than 5,000 different snowflakes.
4. Have a snow-inspired movie marathon. Bring out snowy family favorites like Ice Age and March of the Penguins. To increase the educational value, break out the encyclopedias or hop on the Internet to learn about glaciation or the continent of Antarctica. Be glad that you don't live at Vostok Station in Antarctica, where the coldest recorded temperature on Earth was observed on July 21, 1983 (-128.6°F / -89.2°C).
5. Conduct scientific experiments with snow. "Even though freshly fallen snow appears bright white and clean, it is not," says Dr. Joseph M. Moran, associate director of education at the American Meteorological Society. "One of my favorite activities goes a long way to convincing children not to eat snow. You will need a 1- or 2-gallon pail, large paper coffee filter, paper towels, and a magnifying glass … Scoop up a large pail of freshly fallen snow and bring it indoors to a warm room. Set the pail down undisturbed until all the snow melts. Then, over a sink, slowly and carefully pour the meltwater through a paper coffee filter. Set the coffee filter aside on some paper towels until it dries. Next, examine the surface of the dry coffee filter … What do you see? Where did that material come from?" He adds, "As snowflakes fall through the atmosphere, they intercept and capture a variety of tiny particles that are suspended in the atmosphere and carried by the wind. Most of these particles originated at the Earth's surface. [You can] speculate on what these particles might be."
6. Have your kids play "cool" word games. For example, ask them the following questions: How many words can you think of that start with the word "snow"? (snowflake, snowplow, snowstorm, snowmobile …). How many words can you make from the letters in the word "snowflake"? (sow, now, lake, wake …). For a harder challenge, try making words from the letters in the word "avalanche" (ache, vale, lava, leach, lane …).
7. Try recipes made with snow. (Although, after reading Dr. Moran's comments, you might wish to make your own "snow" by mixing ice from the freezer in your blender!). Scoop up some fresh snow, and mix it with fruit juice to make a snow cone. Or make Snow Cream: Scoop snow into a large bowl, and blend in 1 cup milk or cream, _ cup sugar and a few drops of vanilla. Enjoy!
8. Compete in your version of the Winter Olympic Games. See who can throw a snowball the farthest or sled down a hill the fastest. Stuck indoors? Glide over the kitchen tiles in your socks and have an ice-skating competition.
9. Go outside and examine individual snowflakes, suggests Dr. Moran. He says, "This activity requires a sheet of black construction paper or a dark cloth, a magnifying glass, a journal and a pencil. During a snowfall, go outdoors and hold the construction paper or cloth horizontally to catch some snowflakes. Take care that the heat from your breath or fingers does not melt the snowflakes. Using the magnifying glass, examine the individual snowflakes. Describe what [shapes] you see, and draw some of them in your journal. Are any of the snowflakes identical in appearance?" He notes, "Recording data in a journal is a good introduction to scientific observation and the scientific method."
10. Share your favorite snowy memories with your kids. Do you remember when you saw snow for the first time? Ever caught a snowflake on your tongue? What was the deepest snowfall that you can remember? You might be surprised at what your children share with you. Sometimes, a day spent together "doing nothing" turns into a cherished childhood memory.

Dr. Joseph M. Moran, associate director of education at the American Meteorological Society, answers your questions about snow:

Dr. Moran says, "‘No two snowflakes are alike' is a widely held assumption. Although all snowflakes are composed of ice crystals having six-sided…symmetry, they may occur in billions of different forms." Even so, a researcher discovered two identical snowflakes while sampling clouds over Wisconsin in 1988.

2. Are there different kinds of snow?

"Yes," says Dr. Moran. He explains, "Snow is an agglomeration of ice crystals in the form of flakes that develop in clouds and fall to the Earth's surface. Snowflakes vary in shape and size depending on air temperature and humidity. With decreasing cloud temperature, snowflake crystals occur as needles, dendrites, plates and columns. Snowflake size depends in part on how humid (moist) the air is. At very low temperatures, the humidity is relatively low, and snowflakes tend to be small. Snowflake size also depends on the efficiency with which they collide with one another as they fall through the atmosphere to the ground. At air temperatures near freezing, snowflakes more readily stick together after colliding, and their diameters sometimes reach 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters). Snow pellets and snow grains are similar to snowflakes but much smaller. Snow pellets are soft conical or spherical white particles of ice with diameters of 2 to 5 millimeters. Snow grains are flat or elongated opaque white particles of ice, usually less than 1 millimeter in diameter."

Meteorologists measure three things, says Dr. Moran: "The depth of snow that falls between successive observations, the meltwater equivalent of that snowfall and the depth of snow on the ground at observation time."

Dr. Moran tells us how to measure a storm's snowfall like the experts. "Prior to an anticipated snowfall, place a simple wooden board on the ground.…New snowfall accumulates on the board, and at observation time a ruler is used to measure the snow depth to the board. Record the snowfall…and sweep the snowboard clean so that it is ready to receive new snowfall. Repeat this process throughout the snow event, and then compare your total snowfall with that reported by the local television or broadcast meteorologist. Note that snowfall is notoriously variable from one place to another with considerable differences within the District and across northern Virginia and adjacent Maryland." These differences depend upon things like temperature, the distance you are from the ocean and the track of the storm, he says.