Twenty things you can do with little kids when it is snowing a ton

What is the largest amount of time you can spend outside? It will cheer them up and wear them out.

1. Build things in the snow: snow monsters and snow forts if your kids have the stamina for it, or snow possums if they have short attention spans. If a snowman is too hard you can make a snow squid: make one big blob for the head, and then use sand toys to carve out legs curling around it.
2. Sledding is super-fun on the way down, and those trips uphill will make for excellent naps afterward. Pro tip: promise them hot cocoa at home and leave 15 minutes before they think it's time to leave. If you wait until they think it's time to go, you might be in meltdown territory.
3. Kids love to move snow. Give them each a shovel and set them to work, man. (Keep your expectations very low -- any snow removal they manage to complete is snow removal you don't have to do. Even if they move snow back onto the walk you just shoveled-- hey, they are not squabbling inside.)
4. Make snow cream! I have such happy childhood memories of snow cream. In my recollection it works better to make snow cream outside.
5. Go on a polar explorer walk. Be Amundsen! Or Shackleton! (Just not Scott.) Take binoculars or a camera and take note of the signs of life that you encounter: footprints, scat, birdsong, actual critters. If you see a penguin, he might need a map.
6. It's true that snowball fights are only fun until somebody loses an eye (or takes a snowball square in the face), but they're really really fun up until that point. You can level the playing field if your kids are different ages by requiring big kids to throw with their non-dominant hand, or letting the littler kids start with twice as many snowballs, or something along those lines. 

When you get cold, go inside and pretend you're still outside.

7. Every big snowstorm, in my opinion, requires a fort. Possible materials: couch cushions, blankets, towels, clothespins, clamps. Folding chairs are useful because their frames are sturdy enough to provide some height but narrow enough for clamping. Also needed: materials for making "no grownups allowed" signs. If you can let them take over the living room to make their polar exploration station, they may hang out in it peaceably for a surprisingly long time.
8. Read about cold weather trials inside your warm cozy house. My kids have been riveted by the story of the Titanic. Shackleton's story has a happier ending, but what a heart-pounding story it is. Dust off Andersen's fairy tales and read about the Snow Queen. Oh, and I also love the story of Snowflake Bentley. And The Mitten! I might have to read The Mitten tomorrow even though my youngest child is 10.
9. Make your own snowstorm. Here's a how-to for the snowflakes I made when I was a kid; I never saw this kind until I was an adult but they're pretty nifty.

Snow day food offers lots of opportunities for creating lovely memories and scoring big Fun Mom points.

10. Muffins are pretty painless to make with small children and they can signal "it's a special day!" starting with breakfast. And if you say, "Guess what, kids, frosting for breakfast!" -- even though your "frosting" is lightly sweetened cream cheese thinned out with a little milk, you will still be a hero.
11. All-day hot cocoa is a favorite snow day thing. If I'm making a mugful, I stir together a spoonful of cocoa, a spoonful of sugar, and a tiny sprinkle of salt. I add a splash of milk to make a lump-free paste, and then add milk up to the brim. Microwave until hot. More often on a snowy day I would mix it up in my two-quart saucepan, for which I would need about a third of a cup of cocoa and the same amount of sugar, with a tiny pinch of salt. Here again you need to make a cocoa paste instead of pouring in all the milk at once. You can add vanilla when it's hot, but the kids won't complain if you leave it out.
12. If you are bringing cocoa to the table you can also put marshmallows into an empty sugar bowl and shift into your best snooty waiter accent. "Does Mademoiselle wish to add any marshmallows? Pairhaps she would like ze tongs to transfair ze marshmallows?"
13. Even a small thing presented enthusiastically can be a happy memory in what might otherwise be a long blank bickery day. "I know! Let's get the popcorn popper! Who wants to be my salt sprinkler?! And then! After it's popped! Would you like to eat popcorn...IN THE FORT?!" (I might designate a Fort Popcorn Eating Towel to cut down on the popcorn bits in the living room carpet, and shake it out in the back yard afterward for the squirrels.)
14. If you're a person who likes to spend time in the kitchen, it might be an excellent day for multi-step projects: make cookie dough in the morning (whoever volunteers to wash the mixing bowl gets to lick the beaters!); roll it out, cut out your snowflake cookies, and bake them after lunch; eat a few while they're hot but save the rest for after naptime, when you'll drizzle them with simple snowy frosting (confectioner's sugar + water + vanilla).
15. If you're a person who does not like to spend time in the kitchen (or a person who burned herself out while making cutout cookies with small children), simple comfort food is a perfect way to end a snowy day. Grilled cheese and tomato soup, or macaroni and cheese, or something like that.

Some fighting is inevitable if you have small kids thrown together for a long snowy day. If they get grumpy:

16. Don't try to logic them out of it. Sibling squabbles are generally impervious to logic in the moment. Brief brisk sympathy followed by distraction is your winning strategy here. "Oh, that sounds frustrating. Let's do XYZ instead."
17. XYZ might be a collaborative game like Forbidden Island. (It says 10 and up but you do not have to be 10 to play Forbidden Island.)
18. Another fun non-competitive game is Telestrations. I love it so so much. If your kids can read and write a little, you can have a blast with Telestrations. (We never score it; we just trace the mangled words through their permutations and lie on the floor laughing helplessly.)
19. A brief distraction could be a winter song like The Frozen Logger.
20. (If you become truly desperate, you could send a kid out with instructions to see what happens if he licks the downspout.)

Please share your own ideas in the comments!