rainy day indoor play ideas for toddlers and pre-schoolers

Rainy day indoor play ideas for toddlers and pre-schoolers

 

Kids climbing the walls?  Can’t go outside to play?  Try these cheap and easy ideas to entertain your kids on rainy days. Some are quiet play to wind down and some are energy burners.

 

Paper plane races

Get kids to decorate a piece of coloured paper each, then fold it into a origami plane.  See who’s plane can fly the furthest.  The kids will get excited and burn off some energy.  It only costs about 20 cents and even if the paper planes hit anything, they wont cause breakages.

 

Skittles

Keep about 6 empty soft drink containers.  Put a bit of water in the bottles and set them up like a bowling alley.  Use a small soft ball and get your child to roll it and knock the skittles down.

 

Train ride

Line up your dining chairs and pretend to go on a train ride.  Use your imagination and ask your kids what they can pretend to see on their trip.  Play imaginary eye-spy.  Sometimes we pretend we are on a bus, and sing “the wheels on the bus go round and round”

 

Family photos

Go through your old photo albums and show your kids pictures of them when they were babies.  My kids love pointing out people that they know.

 

Cubby house

Throw a blanket or sheet over your dining table to make a cubby for your kids and their teddies.

 

Indoor picnic

Lay a picnic rug on the floor and have morning tea with teddies and dollies

 

Catalogue cut and paste

Keep catalogues and cut out pictures of toys etc.  get your kids to glue the pictures to a big piece of paper.  We did this recently with a Christmas theme.  I cut out pictures of Christmas trees and decorations and the kids made their own Christmas pictures.

 

Baking

Make a cake or batch of cookies.  Kids love stirring the mixture and you all get to eat the results.  Just make sure they wash hands first.  I have a really easy choc chip cookie recipe I use all the time.

 

Housework

Give your kids little jobs to do, and make them feel really important and special for helping.

 

Dance

I love this one.  Put on some music and dance in the lounge.  Jump around and be silly.  Its fun and great exercise, and will exhaust your kids.  Be sure to have to video camera ready to capture your kids’ cute dancing efforts.  Girls love pretending to be ballerinas.

 

Obstacle course

Make an obstacle course out of cushions, chairs etc.  kids can climb over cushions and crawl under tables.  Make an adventure of it- pretend you are explorers and hide toys they can find along the way.

 

Animal face masks

Plain white paper plates are great for drawing animal faces on.  Attach some elastic and pretend to be those animals. we made lions.  I drew the outline of the lions face and the kids coloured them in.

 

If you don’t have the energy for all this, you could just read a book together or watch a DVD.  There are so many other things you can do, but I can’t write them all.  Hope you have lots of fun!!!