How To Have Rainy Day Fun With Your Children

When the weather just won’t behave itself, keeping the kids amused is the hardest job in the world. There are lots of things you can do indoors with the little ones, but the vast majority of them are likely to be messy. If you get stuck inside with the kids, keep reading for some ideas to keep you all going until the sun shines again.

 

Creating and crafts are the messiest activity you can do with kids, but children just love getting stuck in, literally! If you pop down to your local thrift store or budget shop, you can pick up all kinds of weird and wonderful things that you can paint, stick and decorate. Arm yourself with glitter, glue, stickers, coloring pens and paper cups for hours of fun.

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Thanks to Flickr.com for the image

 

If you can find those little bags of tiny plastic toys, these are great for sticking to a sheet of card with some PVA glue. Cover the toys in glue and sprinkle a pot of glitter on to decorate. Kids absolutely love turning mundane, everyday things into something sparkly, so raid your kitchen drawers to find things you don’t use anymore. Let the kids cover a sheet of colored card with weird and wonderful objects, cover them in glue and throw a load of glitter on top. Now may be the time you find out if you’ve got one of the best vacuum cleaners for handling crafty messes!

 

Sticking with the mundane everyday objects or cheap toys and items from the budget store, you can also paint them with child-friendly paints. When children are allowed to completely change something, they will happily sit there for hours creating new ways to present old things.

 

Water games using the bathtub are so much fun for kids. Remember, never leave your child unsupervised in the bathroom. Using old water or drinks bottles, you can fill them up from the tap and then empty them with a great glugging sound to keep the little ones giggling for ages. For older kids, start experimenting with different weights of water. Some of those cheap plastic toys you found in the budget store may be good for a sink or float game.

 

Using some old scrap paper or card, cut twenty or so evenly shaped pieces. Get the kids to draw their favourite cartoon characters or shapes on the papers. You want to have two of everything. Now you can play a game of snap, or you can play ‘seek the pairs’ by turning over the papers two at a time until you have matched them all up.

 

Tidying up can be boring for kids, but once they have had their crafty fun, they need to help you get the room straight again. Ask them to find some empty containers. Now all sit down together and talk about how to group things into each of the containers. This kind of thinking helps children gain intelligence in problem solving and helps you get the room tidy! For example, the color pens may go in the same pot as the paper. The glue and the stickers may go together in another pot.

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