Rainy day play - things to do with your children on rainy days

Things to do with your children on rainy days.

Build a train

Take a few boxes and a roll of masking tape to build creations. What started off as a car, ended up as a train, complete with carriage for both the boys.

Juliet Harris

Cardboard children

Open out a large box and lay your child down on it so you can draw around them. Then proceed to dress them up using lots of glue, coloured paper, fabric, wool, straw, string etc. Great fun.

Jan West, Wanganui

Build a fort

When I was a child we used to build a fort under the kitchen table with a blanket over the top. Then mum would let us choose a potato each to peel and shed make homemade chips for us.

Indooor picnic

With my free children we have rainy-day picnics. We bought a bundle of cardboard party boxes from Moore Wilson and we use them for the picnic. They decorate their own boxes with their names and stickers and paint etc and then I pack a special indoor picnic in each box and we put on a CD and lay out the picnic blanket in the lunge. Its especially good to also invite all the teddy bears in the house and sit each one around the edge of the blanket because they can then stay on to listen to an impromptu concert or watch my daughter dancing. We can chew up a good few hours with this.

A visit to Te Papa

Children adore the Magic Lilo and wandering around the marae and pushing all the buttons at the Mountains-to-Sea exhibition. As a treat we sometimes visit the Story Place where the kids are entertained by one of the staff for 45 minutes with stories, crafts and play. It costs $3 each, but when youre experiencing the rainy-day-run-out-of-ideas blues then its a Godsend.

Claire Callaghan, Karori

Pasta Day

Pasta Jewellery: Thread macaroni/penne etc. on cotton or string for necklaces, bracelets, crowns. Paint first if you want.
Pasta pictures: Draw simple picture. Coat cardboard/stiff paper with a layer of pva and start sticking.
Pasta music: fill jars, paper cups, saucepans (any containers) with pasta and s-h-a-k-e. if you use two paper cups taped together you can decorate the outside as well.
Pasta animals. Use a sticky glue like uhuh to stick pasta to rocks, empty matchboxes, cotton reels, and turn them into little animals
Pasta money: Use pasta for ' money' in card simple card games or shopping games. The bigger or more complicated the shape, the more it is worth.
Pasta ghoul party: Cook up pasta with a few drops of blue food colouring in the water!
Pasta race: Fill spoons with raw pasta and have an 'pasta and spoon' race. Winner has the most left in their spoon after hopping down the course
Pasta pick up sticks: Use wide spaghetti instead of sticks
Pasta treasure hunt: Hide several large pasta pieces around the room. Participants must find x number to win.
Pasta play: Just give the kids some assorted pasta shapes and craft materials and they will think up all sorts of things to do with them all by themselves!

Yvette Shore, Hamilton

Disco

We child proof our internal garage and set it up as a disco room. The kids love it and its a great way to burn some of that energy!!

Ngairene McLean

Play in the rain

Going out in the rain and playing take care of course not to fall sick!

Fill the bath with coloured bubbles. (Food colouring and bubble bath)

Vidushi Anand, Wellington

Shops with a twist

Help your children to dig out any play money you might have or make some coins out of cardboard. You could also make eftpos cards and a machine to slide them down. Then empty out your entire kitchen cupboard or pantry onto the kitchen table. Let the kids arrange it into a supermarket and proceed to play shops. Once the items have been purchased get thechildren to bring them to you and you can put them back in the cupboard/pantry.

By the end of the game you should have satisfied kids and a kitchen cupboard all spring cleaned!

Sandy Watt, Christchurch

Activities Circuit

My biggest job on rainy days is being referee of my three and four-year-olds squabbles! So I devised a system that keeps us busy for about 90 minutes and is guaranteed to produce no arguments. First we sit down and brainstorm the activities we'd like to do, choose eight or nine of them, and then I set up the "Activities Circuit". Each activity is set out and the children get to choose which one they want to start with (they must each choose a different activity). Then the timer comes out and is set to go off every 10 minutes. The children then move on to the next activity. We pre-number the activities so its good practice for the children in recognising sequential numbers. I try to be as open-minded as possible in the brainstorming phase although this can be challenging given some of the suggestions I have had! Generally if the activity can be played with for 10 minutes with minimal mess, then it becomes part of the circuit. The setting up can take 20 minutes or so but the kids love helping with this as they're not usually allowed to get so many toys out at the same time!

Typically, these activities may include:

colouring in
painting
creating with small boxes, glue, wrappers, feathers etc
computer game
dancing
hut building with blankets and chairs
playstation
playdough
eating a snack
reading books
playing with the train set
dress ups
jigsaw puzzles
name writing with pens and paper
board games

Our Activities Circuit is lots of fun and also gives me the opportunity for precious one-on-one time with each child in whatever activity they're doing. The other good thing is that on a rainy weekend, my 10 year old isn't too old to join in. Afterwards, if its not too cold and just a little rainy, we get our jackets on and go for a quick sprint around the garden in the rain. Back inside, mum makes the hot chocolates while the kids pack away some of the activities.

Kelley Sullivan, Christchurch

Article sourced with permission from Parenting magazine, Parents Inc.

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