Activity books for Christmastime and Hanukkah are common enough, but how can kids keep busy from January to April, when winter seems to drag on forever? Drake and Love, the talented team of sisters who created The Kids Cottage Book, offer unlimited ideas: bake trail bars, strap on homemade snowshoes and head outdoors to track deer, build a snow citadel, stage wacky Winter Olympics, complete with Design-Your-Own Toboggan Races. For sky-watchers, a map of the winter constellations is included, as well as explanations of meteorological terms. Historical context (of native American games, for example) is given where relevant. Indoor activities include fireside storytelling, carving scrimshaw from bars of soap, and making crystalline icicles from borax and yarn.

Heather Collins’ pencil drawings provide easy-to-follow illustrations for the activities, as well as beautifully evoking winter’s subtle palette of greys.

Many activities offer double the fun, by showing kids how to make the object they’ll be playing with, such as snow goggles from egg cartons, or crokinole boards from cardboard boxes. But the best by-products of these games, recipes, crafts, and experiments are the lessons – for all ages – learned in science, math, art, and history. (My preschool daughter and engineer husband equally enjoyed the challenge of constructing snowflakes and domes from marshmallows and toothpicks.)

The Kids Winter Cottage Book is 70 pages slimmer than The Kids Cottage Book and sells for the same price, but it is still an excellent value and indispensable resource for children, parents, teachers, and librarians.