With the cold and often wet winter days set in and the opportunity to get out and about diminishing families start to spend more and more time in the house. Facing a day indoors with the kids can feel quite daunting, especially when you have exhausted all of your usual activities or you want to keep a limit on the amount of allowed screen time.
However you don’t need to fear rainy days, if you are armed with the right activities then a wet play day can be just what everybody needs. A chance to chill out a little bit, keep your pajamas on all day and spend some quality time all together.
So try not to panic if you find yourself facing days where going outside just isn’t possible; here are some activities to keep you and the children busy, all day.
Indoor scavenger hunt
Kids love a treasure hunt. It is a guaranteed way to get them excited and keep them entertained for hours, yes really.
Children of all ages absolutely love playing detective and rummaging around the house for hidden goods. What is more, you can make your hunt as adventurous as you like.
You could opt to keep it simple and hide a prized artifact or you could really up the ante and create clues and hints to help them find the missing items.
It is a great tool for kids of all ages and it can even be used as a means of fun learning and a way to encourage children to recognize and improve their phonological and phonemic awareness.
An excellent way to do this is to hide letters around the house that spell out a word and once they piece it together and recognize the word they win.
Create an indoor car track
This is a great option if you have hard flooring. All you need is some masking tape and toy cars. You can create roads and race tracks with the masking tape by sticking it down on hard flooring.
You can then use these roads to race toy cars against each other or create an imaginary town. The more space you have the more you can create. If you or your children have the artistic license or imagination you could add all sorts of toys, boxes, or animals to create an entire imaginary village.
Once you are done with this activity all you have to do is pull up the masking tape and it is as though it never existed.
Just don’t be tempted to use sellotape or double-sided tape as this won’t come up so easily and will mark your floor. Not to mention all the dust and fluff floating around will stick to it once you do try to pull it up.
Indoor exercise
Just because you cannot get outside doesn’t mean you cannot get exercise. If lockdown laws have taught you anything it is how to exercise in your own home. There are lots of great online exercises available for children on YouTube.
Some children may prefer the slow and imaginative pace of Cosmic Kids Yoga whereas others may want something a little more high energy such as Kids Bop TV. This will see your children singing and dancing along to some of their favorite tunes.
If the following fitness on YouTube isn’t for you then how about a timed obstacle course around the house. It could involve crawling under chairs and tables, running up the stairs, and tagging something in each room, all the while racing the clock.
It is a fun way of getting the heartbeat up and exercising without the kids even noticing that they are doing it.
Make a box fort
Raid the recycling and scour the house for as much excess cardboard as possible. Cereal boxes, shoe boxes, and anything that is clean and can be used to help create an imaginative cardboard box fort or castle.
You might just need some strong tape to keep it all together, other than that the only limit is your imagination.
Have a tea party
Whether you opt for an all singing all dancing indoor tea party, where every toy and teddy is invited or an indoor picnic on a blanket on the floor, spice up an otherwise boring lunchtime and do something a little different.
Why not get dressed up for a mini tea party? Encourage the kids to put on their favourite fancy dress or choose whatever outfit they wish. Set up an indoor picnic area, kiddie table and chairs, or even an indoor tent, somewhere or something different from the kitchen table to make lunchtime a little more interesting.
When it comes to the food you don’t need to have all the fancy cakes and party food in, why not make sandwiches as normal but cut them using baking cookie cutters (if you have them) it could be in the shape of stars, circles, or even Christmas trees.
Don’t just give chips in the packet but poor them into sharing bowls, cut fruit up and use toothpicks for serving. It doesn’t have to be grand just a little different from a typical lunchtime to keep them entertained and impressed.
Do a science experiment
This certainly isn’t as hard as it sounds. In fact, there are loads of child-friendly science experiments available online for you to pick and choose the most suitable for you and your kids. One that is sure to please children of all ages is the exploding fizzy pop and Mentos experiment.
All you need is a bottle of diet cola and a packet of Mentos. Although you may want to do this in the garden, or somewhere you don’t mind whipping up cola. You simply drop in two Mentos into a bottle of carbonated cola and stand back, well back, as you watch the cola explode out of the bottleneck.
Get creative
Whether you are a house full of natural craftspeople or not there is something every household can do to get creative with the kids.
If you don’t have a box of crafts brimming with glue and glitter then use your imagination and make jewellery out of pasta. Colour in or paint whatever pasta you have in the cupboards and hang it along some string to make a pasta necklace.
Or if you only have paper at your disposal then why not Google some simple origami to have a go at. Try finding out how to make an origami piano, it is easier than you might think and all you need is a piece of paper.
Storytime
Storytime can come in many forms. You can all choose your favourite book and sit and read together or why not come up with your own story. Story cubes are a great way of doing this for those who may not have the confidence in their imagination to make up their own story.
But if you do then let your and the children’s imaginations run wild and create your own tale. You can simply discuss it together or why not act it out or re-create scenes with toys or dolls. Better yet you could make puppets to tell your story.
Another great option is to listen to an audiobook or story via a podcast, it is an excellent way to calm everybody down a little and sit and chill for twenty minutes. Why not create a cozy den or seating area so that everybody can sit back and listen in comfort.
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