PRACTICAL PARENTING ◽ HOME
Indoors? No Problem
by Marcy Lytle
Rainy and cold days with kids indoors and prove to be trying, to say the least, for both parents and kiddos! And fall/winter often brings these days, sometimes multiple ones in a row. I recently spend a couple of days indoors with the littlest ones in our family, and it was so helpful to have a plan and a list of things to do, I thought I’d share with you:
Balloon volleyball – Just blow up a few balloons. Then tie a string across a space (we connected a stool to the sofa) and hit the “ball” back and forth. Lots of squeals of delight will ensue, energy will be burned, and everyone might nap beautifully.
Box Airport – If you have an Amazon box (surely, you do), a paper towel or toilet paper tube, packing tape, washi tape, and any other small cardboard boxes, along with scissors…you can build an airport for those little matchbox cars and Little People airplanes, helicopters, etc. Make windows and tape them on the walls, use tape to make a runway, even make cardboard rugs for the lounge area. Tape the tube for the air controller tower. This takes a while, and you can leave it and come back to it, multiple times during the day!
Sticker Stories – Grab a pack of puffy stickers (the best for little hands and fingers) and a few spiral notebooks. Let the kids create a story with their stickers and tell it to you, and you to them. Keep the spirals for future sticker stories, as you do this again and again.
Dancing with the Little Stars – Take a break and turn up the music and dance. There are lots of kid worship videos available on YouTube with familiar worship songs like This Little Light of Mine and more. Get up and groove, lay on the floor and move, raise your hands up high, and dance to the sky…with them. Hold them and spin them around. Do this multiple times throughout the day.
Grab the Umbrellas – If it’s just drizzling and not too cold, go outside and find puddles to stomp in or jump. Amazon has really cute umbrella and raincoats. The kids will love having their own umbrella and will want to hang it up properly on a hook in their rooms! Don’t forget your own umbrella too, and take that walk to look for puddles. It’s really the best.
Sand Boxes – There’s this cute set of four stackable sand sensory boxes on Amazon that have little figures too, to make little scenes, and they clean up and can be put away neatly. The kids love creating and raking and burying and finding!
Clothespin Art – Grab a few things from nature or your craft box like a feather, a leaf, a pipe cleaner, a weed, etc. and clip to clothespins. Paper plates are then filled with three colors of washable tempura paint blobs, and the kids can paint with these clothespin paintbrushes! It’s messy, but it washes up easily, and it probably won’t be pretty. But they will think their creations are marvelous. Hang them up on display and marvel with them.
Make a Snack – Take graham crackers, a spread (cream cheese or pumpkin butter), mini chocolate chips, edible eyes, M&Ms, etc. and let the kids make faces on the crackers and eat them. All sorts of faces. And when they’re made, let them watch a show that you approve of. A little TV time on a rainy day, with a fun snack in hand, it’s heaven. Literally, it’s heaven on earth to the littles. If you spread a picnic blanket and offer cute plates, it’s heaven to the max.
Rainy day activities are a necessary part of parenting, aren’t they? Keep a list and add to it, keep it handy, and refer to it often when those stay-in days catch you off guard. And enjoy time indoors, with them, while it rains or freezes outside…