Keep Your Sanity With These Indoor Activities For Your Kids

Rainy Day?  No transport? Too hot?  Feeling poorly?  For whatever reason, you may need (or want) to stay in with your kids from time to time.  This can be a tricky time if you’re not prepared for indoor activities.  Try out these ideas and prevent those crazy rainy day explosions of boredom!

Puzzles & Board Games

When my children were younger they were all about the puzzles.  Every day we would have a regular puzzle session, although they never wanted to stray beyond their favourite 5 puzzles.

Now they are older (7 and 13) we all love having a games afternoon.  Top favourites at the moment include Game of Life Junior, Cluedo, Monopoly and Uno.  There are so many board games to choose from that there is bound to be something that your child will enjoy.

Although not cheap, I wouldn’t recommend buying board games or puzzles second hand as in my experience there are often pieces or parts missing.

Toys

Some say that the art of play is a lost one and that children are losing creativity.  Certainly, in this age of technology, a lot of children are forgetting the pleasure of just playing with toys.

The go-to toys in our house are Lego, Dolls, Playmobil and Vehicles.  Encourage your children to mix them up and create a plot to their play.  Or if your child likes categorising things then why not make a car line, sorting them by size, colour or type.

My daughter likes to watch short Youtube videos of children playing and then uses their play ideas to create days-long games all over the house.  So her dolls will have a tea party, a pool party, bedtime, storytime.

Sometimes the Lego men attack the dolls.  And vice versa.

Technology

Whilst I try to limit the amount of screen time that my children have, at times they can be brilliant.  Try out these ideas to see if you can wean your child off sitting and staring at games and be a little more active.

Fitness App

Is your child obsessed with a smartphone?  Use this to your advantage by downloading some fitness apps.  Try the 7 Minute Workout, or the British Military App for interval training, or one of the many yoga apps for something a bit more gentle.

Family games consoles

There’s nothing wrong with a gaming station, but if your kids are anything like my son, it’s difficult to stop them and they are completely absorbed and anti-social whilst they are on it!

So try some family-based games such as Wii racing games or sports.  Turn gaming into a family activity.

Disco

This is the perfect no-preparation-required indoor activity.

Get the music pumping!  Dress up in your best neon!  Do hair and makeup!

Boogy!

All kids love dancing so why not pump up the volume and dance around like crazy fools?

Gardening as an indoor activity

Why not make up some pots for your living room, or build a fairy garden?  If you know you’re going to be in and need an indoor activity, stock up on some wide shallow pots, some small flowering plants, grass seed, soil and decorative items such as glass balls (careful here with younger children) and fairy figures.   Or make it into a Superhero cave with rocks and hero figures. Why not theme it to your child’s favourite?

Movie Night & Chill Out

One of our favourite indoor activities, especially on a cold, dark, wet day, is a movie night or afternoon.

Stock up on snacks and drinks, get the duvets, blankets and cushions down and snuggle up together for a couple of hours of quiet time.

Reading/Journalism

Encourage your children to read.  Not only will this fire their creativity but it is also vital in increasing literacy skills and developing language.

For younger children why not snuggle up and read some books together?  You could then play a game based on the characters or set your child on a treasure hunt to find things from the book.

For older children, you could encourage them to write a book report or, if they are part way through a book, why not write the next chapter?  What do they think is going to happen?

Cooking – a really fun indoor activity

From preparing lunch to baking a cake, there is so much your children could do in the kitchen.

For younger children just making a sandwich together can be fun, whilst older children could be tasked with a recipe and left to make you a delicious cake!

Make it a family affair and batch bake meals for the freezer.  Not just a useful activity but also teaches your children about nutrition.

Sewing – indoor activities that are practical and useful

I was surprised on a recent visit to my parents’ by my children asking her to teach them to cross stitch.  My mum is amazing at cross stitch and embroidery and she promptly whipped out a box of supplies and within 15 minutes they were all sat stitching away quite happily.

 

If you don’t have lots of sewing supplies then merely teaching your child to fix a hole in a sock is really important.  Why not practice on some scraps of cloth if you haven’t got any handy broken clothes?

So why not give some of these a go?  Great for rainy days, too-tired-to-go-out days and even children-are-a-bit-under-the-weather days, there is something for everyone here.  I love taking my kids out but sometimes you need to entertain at home, so why not try some out?  Let me know what your favorite indoor activities for kids are in the comments.

 

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I’m Fran, a busy mum, wife, teacher, blogger at Tea Please Love, musician and general housekeeper! I’m mum to Amy and Ben and wife to Mike, and this is a blog all about our lives.  It features all the things I love – time spent with my family, clothes, music, trying to plan our super busy lives from day to day and also, let’s not forget, drinking tea!

Download this free activity checker for your children.  This ‘not-going-out guide’ for children will do all the hard work for you.