With the weather being so truly awful at the time of writing this post, we've been pretty reluctant to venture out too much - every single day Tyne asks me if we can go somewhere fun but with constant warnings on the news advising us to avoid car journeys unless necessary due to high winds I've been very reluctant to agree.
Instead I've been wracking my brains to keep coming up with ways to keep the children entertained indoors - for one or two days a week they're happy to stay inside and play with their many toys of course, but when you're spending a lot of time indoors it can become pretty tiresome and they start to look for other things to keep them occupied.
I find Pinterest to be invaluable at giving me ideas of ways to pass the time indoors with the boys, and lately we've been trying out various activities I've found...so I thought today I'd share our top activities!
Spider Man Webs
Tyne is currently obsessed with anything super hero related, and so I knew he'd love to play Spiderman for the afternoon!
This really couldn't be any simpler and it kept Tyne entertained for a good hour or so!
Simply grab some tape, and make a "web" in a door way - ball up some paper (or anything else to hand that they can throw which will stick!) and get them to practice their spidey skills by throwing the paper at the webs and seeing how many they can make stick!
Sometimes kids really are that easily entertained!
Homemade Fairy Dough
Lately Tyne loves the chance to "Home make" anything at all so I knew this one would be a hit. He has plenty of play dough which he LOVES to play with, but he gets the most enjoyment out of making something himself from scratch so one afternoon we left the Playdough in its pots and decided to make our own fairy dough!
All it takes is some hair conditioner, cornflour and food colouring in your desired colours - we added equal parts of cornflour and conditioner, and then a dash of food colouring to get the colours we wanted - if the dough seemed too wet we added more cornflour, if it seemed too dry we added more conditioner.
We mixed it together with our hands and Tyne loved seeing the consistency change. I found it required a few minutes of kneading before you could tell whether the consistency was right so don't be too quick to add more of anything - give it a couple of minutes to come together first!
Once it was made, Tyne loved playing with it and exploring the way it moved and the shapes he could make - I let Noah have a go too (being careful to make sure he didn't get any in his mouth due to the conditioner) and he really enjoyed squishing it in his fingers.
The dough was similar to playdough but so much softer and silkier, it smelt wonderful too (thanks to the lemon conditioner I used!)
Baking
A good way to pass half an hour or so is to bake - now I have to admit, I am NO Mary Berry so I'm pretty lazy when it comes to baking and I much prefer to just use the character cupcake kits!
I pick a couple up with each weekly shop, they're usually less than £2 and Tyne loves the different characters you can get - his favourites being Thomas cupcakes of course but this week we've also made Tom & Jerry and Minions ones which he loved!
He loves going through the ingredients checklist with me, helping to crack the eggs and do the mixing and of course - the best part - licking the spoon and demolishing the cakes afterwards!
We've actually started to bake regularly every Sunday now, and he really looks forward to making something new every weekend.
Traditional Arts & Crafts
Quite often a simple afternoon of regular painting or making collages with gluing and sticking and cutting toys he likes out of the Argos catalog will be enough to keep Tyne entertained for a while, and it's very low effort for me too which is always a winner!
If we feel like doing something a little different, we'll try finger painting or puffy painting (using flour, food colouring and water and popping in the microwave for a few seconds after finishing to see the paint puff up and complete the image!).
When there's a holiday coming up, we love to make themed pictures and cards - recently we made these Valentines cards and pictures.
For Noah, we often do finger painting in a bag - which basically involves a piece of paper and some paint splodges in a zip locked bag which we then give to him and allow him to bash about! He loves it!
Water Play
Good old water play is always a go to - both of the boys love it!
We put a large waterproof mat down on the living room floor, give both of the boys a basin of warm water each and let them splash to their hearts content!
I usually give Noah some jugs and spoons etc to splash and pour with, and Tyne usually likes to do something involving his toys such as lining up all of his cars or trains for a car/engine wash! This keeps him entertained for ages!
Rocket To The Moon
This was a game invented by my Uncle when I was a child that I remembered recently and knew that Tyne would just love!
He absolutely loves imagination games, and lately I've been calling upon my old career of teaching drama to children to go through some exercises with him - he definitely inherited my love of performing arts as he just loves me to talk him through an acting exercise such as pretending to be a seed in the ground and slowly growing up into a tree! He follows every step carefully and really gives it his all!
So Rocket to the moon was bound to be a hit!
Basically the game involves whatever you can find to use as "moon" stuff - you blindfold the child and lead them around your obstacle course explaining to them what each item they're going over is!
In our house, I hold Tyne's hand and lead him around the furniture - every now and then he'll need to walk over the wobbly bridge (A long cushion propped up against the sofa!), step over the moon rocks (Some candles laid sideways!), bounce across the craters (Cushions on the floor), ride on the moon buggy (his trike!), fight off the aliens (balloons that I bop him on the head with and make alien sounds for!) and then jump into his rocket and do the countdown before he blasts off into the sky (Sit him in Noahs walker, shake it about a bit and then lift it up over my head!).
Obviously you have to improvise with whatever you have at home, but every living room has plenty that can be looked at differently and used as Rocket To The Moon equipment!! I also like to stick Babylon Zoo's Spaceman on the ipad for some atmospheric background music while we play!!!
Playing Shops
I love this game as it takes moments to set up and clear away, but keeps Tyne entertained for ages!
I simply grab a few of our tins of food, packets of biscuits, etc and line them up as though they were on a shelf - I then give Tyne his till and money, and a shopping basket and he plays shop! Its so simple but he absolutely loves it!
Homemade Slime
I blogged about our Homemade slime recently, it's become one of Tyne's favorite things to do on a rainy afternoon!
You can find our recipe and read all about it here!
Bath Paints
If I'm finding the kids are going particularly stir crazy one afternoon then often the best solution is to put them in the bath together, that way they're not running circles around me and the bath usually keeps them pretty well entertained!
We'll often have bath paints for some extra fun using simple shaving foam and food colouring - it's easy to clean up afterwards and they just love painting the sides of the bath with it!
What are your favorite things to do on rainy days?!
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