10 Things To Do With Kids On A Rainy Day

Oh, No, It’s Raining. Again…What Are You Going To Do All Day?

10 Thing To Do With Kids That Develop Their Imagination

The world is mad about electronic gadgets. Television, computers, iPods, iPads, Smart Phones, and Kindles have taken over people’s lives. They can’t live without them, and don’t remember life when they didn’t exist. It seems they even have electronics for kids as young as 2 years old. While electronics have their place, they can never replace the wonderful word of imagination.

A child’s imagination can take them anywhere, far beyond what any electronic gadget will do for them.

Take a journey back in time, when kids played all day, without the use of electronics.

1. Coloring and Drawing

Coloring brings out the budding artist in your child.

Get out that box of crayons and give them some exercise. Kids of all ages love to color. It doesn’t matter if they stay in the lines, as long as they are having fun.

If they don’t want to use a coloring book, grab some construction paper or scrap paper, and let them draw their own pictures. The can color them in after they are done.

Colored pencil, magic markers, paints, and finger paints can also be used to color and draw.

Remember to hang them up on the fridge!

2. Make Your Own Instruments & Start A Marching Band

With a little imaginations, and things from around the house, you can create your own musical instruments.

Grab some rubber bands a tissue box, or an old shoe box and create a “guitar”.

An old coffee can makes a great drum.

Fill a small soda bottle with dried beans, and you have a maracas.

Take a tin can out of the recycle bin and bang it with a spoon.

Now, line up the kids, and you too, and march around the house!

3. Sing A Long

Now that you have made your own musical instruments, you can have a sing a long. You can choose any children’s song to play along with.

There are hundred and hundreds of kids songs to pic from. Farmer In The Dell, Skip To My Lou, You Are My Sunshine, and even the Adams Family theme song makes great songs to sing a long too.

Disney songs are always a popular favorite with kids of all ages! (I’m still singing “I Wanna Be Like You”)

4. Read A Book

Remember books? They are the things that were invented to learn from, long before the advent of the Kindle and other E-Readers.

You can read the book to the child, or have them read to you. It allows for quite time, and allows their imagination to go wild.

5. Write A Book

If they can’t find anything that they really want to read, have them write their own story. Give them some ideas on how to get started, and let their imagination run free. They can even draw their own illustrations.

When done, bind the book using two pieces of card stock, or construction paper. Staple, or sew together with some yarn. Have them draw the cover of the book.

6. Visit Your Local Library

If they don’t want to read a book, and they don’t care to write their own book, you can take them to your local library. Here, they will discover thousands of books, and movies.Many libraries also have some toys. Someone else’s toys are always so much more fun to play with.

They will discover a whole new world at the library, and will hopefully want to keep going back.

All it takes is one magical card, a library card, and they will have access to limitless use of their imagination.

7. Make Sock Puppets

Grab some old socks, some pom poms, yarn, and a hot glue gun, and you have the makings for one great sock puppet.

Put the sock onto your hand with the top as the top of the head, and the heal as the bottom of the mouth. Have them decorate however they choose. Be sure to use supervision with the hot glue gun.

Macaroni can be glue on for teeth. Buttons can be sewn on or glued on for eyes. The yarn becomes the hair, or the beard.

Magic markers can be used to draw tongues, eyes and lips.

8. Put On A Puppet Show

Okay. You’ve made your great looking puppets. Now, the puppets want to play too!

There are a few ways that you can put on a puppet show. You can pull out the sofa, and kneel behind it, with your puppets above your head. You can also cover the dinning room table with a sheet, and sit behind the sheet. Put the puppets up in the air, and start talking.

9. BORED…Try Some Board Games

Kids have been playing board games since 3500 BC. Backgammon is one of the oldest games still in existence today. My generation grew up playing Monopoly, Life, Checkers, Trouble, and Sorry!, and Scrabble. I still like to try to beat my son at Scrabble. Notice I said try.

While many are based on luck, others are based on strategy. Board games can teach young children how to take turns, and how to be a good winner…or loser.

Board games are fun for the whole family, and many families have a board game night. Our use to be Thursday.

10. Bake Some Cookies

After you have done all nine activities, you and the kids are bound to be needing a snack. Bake some cookies and have the kids help you. This can be a great way to get some math teaching in, without them even knowing it.

Once out of the oven, you can have them decorate them with jimmies or sprinkles. Delicious plain, too, of course.