Keeping Sanity in Winter

I fill up the kitchen sink with some water and add soap, throw in some spoons, spatulas, tupperware and let him play in the sink, it keeps him busy for about 45 minutes.

You could make cookies, decorating with all kinds of different sprinkles, icing, etc.

Get some construction paper and put it across the table and make a table clothe

Make cards for grandparents and friends to send. Let them stick them in envelopes and walk them to the mailbox

let them vacuum ha ha, my son LOVES it.

make forts with blankets and chairs

put on some rain boots and a rain jacket and head out to play in the rain:)

good luck
K.

Mom to two boys, Jordan will be one tomorrow (boo hoo) and Gabriel who is 2 1/2

Hullabalu and Twister are two great indoor games that get kids moving indoors and can be done in a fairly small space.

I hope this helps.

Dear Maria,
You've gotten some great advice!
I agree with the tent thing, forts, finger painting...anything creative.
The weather is really crappy where I live and we love the heat, so I would build a fire and get it to about 90 in the house and we'd all run around in our shorts or bathing suits and pretend it was summer. We'd make iced tea or lemonade and have hot dogs and put out a blanket on the floor like we were having a pic-nic and camping. We played music and just made the best of it.
I also saved all my kid's Halloween costumes and things like that so they could play dress up or pretend.
If I had a dollar for all the days my kids loved running around in their costumes in the middle of winter, I'd be rich!
Just get their little creative juices flowing and you will be surprised how much fun you can have.
My kids are both absolutely hilarious so we never lacked for a way to have fun.
I have video of my little boy when he was still in diapers, very dramatically keeling over with his tongue sticking out so me and his sister could pretend we had to give him CPR. Which ultimately turned into a tickle session.
There are a million ways to be silly and have fun and laugh.
Trust me.

Use empty water bottles, tissue or paper towel centers and a ball to go "bowling". Or use small paper lunch sacks - number them, set them up and let the boys try and knock them down with a ball.

Make bean bags out of old sock, rice and secure with a rubber band. Try to get the bean bags into a large basket or onto a pillow case or for more of a challenge, onto a piece of printer paper.

Cut out the shape of a leaf. Put a bean bag under the leaf and throw it up in the air (try and hit the ceiling if you can), the bean bag will come down fast and the leaf will float down. Have the boys take turns trying to catch the falling leaf. It's great fun and really good for the hand-eye coordination. Make sure you clear all the obstacles from the immediate area so nobody looses a tooth or blackens their eye while watching the falling leaf instead of the end table.

Make a feely box out of an old kleenex box. Put toys or wooden shapes or play food, or wooden letters, etc. and have them take turns feeling the object and guessing what it is.

Fill an ice cube tray with water. Color 4 of the water cubes with dye using only the primary colors. Let the boys use medicine droppers to experiment with mixing colors in the remaining water cubes.

Pretend to be at the circus. Put a strip of masking tape on the floor and let the boys take turns pretending to walk the tightrope. Have them do it different ways... forward, backward, hopping, balancing small objects in the palm of their hands or for your older one balancing on the backs of the hands.

Hope that helps. And I'm not on this site to push my book. If you see my profile, I do enjoy being a part of this community for the wisdom women share with one another. However, if you'd like more ideas like the above, I have a book called Kitchen Table Play and Learn (Amazon). It's a book of 30 thematic lessons which include academically enriching preschool activities and crafts that parents can do with their children. As you can see, it's also good for a rainy day! You'll have to modify much of the above and what's in the book for your little guy, but he can certainly have some fun too.

Enjoy!

Maria,

We have several methods of burning some energy while being stuck inside:

* Play music and dance around the living room
* I blow bubbles and the children (and dogs) chase them and try to catch them.
* I turn on the flashlight and shine it on to a carpeted floor. Again, the children and the dogs love to chase the light around the floor. After a few minutes, they finally get to 'catch' the light.

Anyway, I hope this (and the other suggestions that you received) will help!

~ L.

even when it's cold and wet outside, bundle the boys up and go for a walk! when you get home, warm up some milk. my husband is from canada and makes fun of me when i say i'm cold. he played in the snow all winter long. now i bundle up my daughter and we just go for it. she's 16 months and thinks the rain is fun. it is great to break up the day instead of being inside all day long. i tried that and it did drive me crazy. good luck!

Go to REI, buy them rain coats, rain pants and rain boots and head to the park! Kids don't care about the rain (as long as they aren't freezing) and they'll have a great time splashing in puddles, filling/dumping buckets of water and just running around. Bundle yourself up and bring your umbrella and a thermos of coffee/tea. Our playgroup does this and the kids are fine playing for 2 hours in the rain/wet/cold. The rain gear makes all the difference!

My daughter's birthday is next week and I'm always needing to come up with indoor activities for the party. One we did last year and all ages loved it was to take your blow up pool/swimming pool and put a bag of pit balls in it. Then put various toys and stuffed animals in so they can find them. It was lots of fun and we ended up leaving it up for quite some time after the party.
Playdough is a good one and I have a great home made recipe that lasts for awhile if you want it.
Take care and hope your sanity comes back soon.

You could play board games like shoots and ladders or candyland, go fish is good for really young kids. I would check out the local store to see what kinds of games they have. You could also have them help bake cookies and pies, children that young love to help. You can also have them make home made playdough. Hope this helps!

Hi, I know it is a challenge!
I will sahre some things I have tried:

Play doh- hugely popular in our house!
Finger paints
Bake a cake - even the little one can stir the bowl
Get some stickers and play around with sticker books
Build a fort with blankets and furniture
or set up a pup tent and pretend your camping in the house

I know its all messy but who cares, it all cleans up.
Good luck

Furniture forts. Train sets. Puppet shows. Legos. Marching band. Cardboard box robots. Dress-up. Music time. Red-light green-light. Simon says. What time is it Mister Wolf. Play dough (home-made is best!) Baking. Tea party.
I haven't had my morning coffee yet, so that's all I can come up with.
Good luck!
K. in EC

Arts and crafts. Painting, drawing, making sculpture, knitting (boys enjoy it too I hear), sculpy, etc. Check out Hobby Lobby and find some affordable activities which will help you bond with your kids while teaching them valuable skills and hand/eye coordination. HAve fun!

If you have a garage that is clear enough for a car... you can ride trikes inside it too. You can use chalk on the floor and make a track/road. Have them draw bldgs and even a stop sign in the middle. You can all play lots of stop/start, how well do you listen to direction games. Alternatively, you may also be able to play ball in the garage. It may be cold out there, but it's dry and you can come inside and snuggle and get warm immediately following your time in the garage.

If you were to buy a toy from the comfort of your home on amazon, I can't say enough good things about the "busy bee" .I got it for my 3 yr old but my other kids get involved (12 and 9).I got it for 10 dollars and it's worth every penny and the shipping was free. Look it up. While your there if there is a good price on "Hyber dash" thats another great indoor run around and learn game. When I have a little one your youngests age I bring in this small little tikes cube. It has a slide on it. Even just a little tikes slide. That has always been a good way to get out energy indoors. A key thing is to rotate what they do. Once you see they have stopped having daily interest in something put it away and bring out a new thing.

Hi Maria,

I agree with Candy. Just go for it regardless of the rain. I live in London at the moment and if my nearly two year old and I stayed in every time it rained I would go completely insane. Buy your boys some welly boots and encourage them to splash in the puddles, look for worms on the sidewalk and catch raindrops on their tongues. Then come home, snuggle up with some warm milk and enjoy the warmth of your home. It's an opportunity to talk about different kinds of weather. Someone wise once said - all weather is good weather if you have the right clothing.

If you really want to stay in the warm:
- Build a fort out of your sofa cushions and some blankets
- An alternative to this is to make an obstacle course. Make your sofa cushions into a tunnel, lay a jump rope on the ground that they have to follow, then maybe they have to climb over one chair and under another... You can use whatever you have and be creative.
-Have a teddy bears picnic in the living room. Have lunch on a blanklet on the floor and invite all of their teddys.
- Make cookies or banana bread. Banana bread is particularly fun because you can let them mush the bananas up with their hands. They will love to eat what they've made. This is not an activity for those who like a pristine kitchen.
- Ask them help you tidy the house. My nearly two year old loves to sweep and hand me things from the dishwasher for me to put away. Just make sure to take anything sharp out first. He also hands me the wet clothes to put in the dryer and then loves the feel of the dry clothes when they come out - but make sure there are no hot zippers. They can sneak up on you. You won't get much done and what does get done won't get done quickly, but they'll love it and really feel like they've accomplished something AND it really tired them out. It's great!

Have fun and enjoy the weather. D..x

My son got a nerf style soft foam bowling game for his birthday & he loves it. Of course he sets up the pins in a row and cheats like a gypsy but it keeps him busy.

i used to have a set of old books called 'the big red book'or 'the little red book'with stories,games,pictures to color,poems,etc-it might be out of print-but was great fun-perfect for a rainy day.

Hi Maria,

Try setting up a card table and draping a blanket over it for a tent/fort. (If you can get a large appliance box, all the better--they can decorate the walls). Allow them to play in there, eat their lunch, and take their naps. Worked great for me. They took toys and books in there, and occupied themselves for hours. If the 3.5 no longer naps, play a quiet board game like Candy Land or Zoo Lotto--or bake cookies together. There are lots of arts and craft projects you could do with them. Have a quiet movie time with popcorn or a favorite snack. Have them listen to books on tape--the older one can turn the pages. Good luck--you will survive--we all have! LOL N.

Maria,

Move all your living room/dining room furniture together and make a fort with blankets or sheets. Kids have endless fun in forts and its great for their imagination. Also, if its dark outside or if you have blinds, you can make the room dark and bring in flashlights for them. Read to them in there etc.

Molly

Hi Maria
Since no one else has suggested this, maybe no one else plays it!! We (my son, niece, and I) colored a big empty box and then played "transmogrification" in it. i stole that name from the calvin and hobbes comic!! to play, you lay the box on its side so the top opens like a door. then whoevers turn it is goes in the box to "transmogrify" and makes all kinds of noises and shakes the box. when the noise, etc stops out comes the person pretending to be something. with us its animals or people. the others try to guess what the person is. once the box was to beat to use anymore we would just hunch down behind something and make noises. We also had a big shoe shaped pop up tent that had small balls with it to throw onto a sticky target and big balls to throw into holes that has different scores marked. it was a blast. i dont remember where i got it. if your boys are into bugs we also had a bug vacuum and magnifying glass and bug keepers. we'd go out (in the rain) and see what kind of bugs like it when its wet vs. bugs we would collect when it was dry. also look for bugs in the house (even tho there usually arent any except the occasional spider) it will keep them busy. have fun!!

My mom use to do living room camping with me. We would set up a small tent in the living room. lay out our sleepingbags and make smores in the microwave. My stuffed animals would play the role of all the woodland creatures. We would also tell ghost stories, have a picnic and go for a scavanger hunt.

If you don't have a tent you can make one by draping your dining table with sheets and blankets.

We have a play tent, and save it for 'special' days like these. It is a big ol' Disney princess tent from Toys R Us, it sets up in a minute. (We are all girls, so we play tea in our pink tent, but I'm sure there's a boy version) A tent on a rainy day refreshes the same old activities- have a picnic in it.
If you have a garage- I move my car out and we play in there. again, something different, and they can play with most of their outside toys in there. (plus I have the treadmill in mine, so I can get some time in it while the girls play!)
Bake cookies
Have a dance party! (Okay, again, I have 2 girls...)

Get out your cookbooks and bake with them.
You can get some hand choppers that the little ones can use them to cut up banannas, thin slices of apple etc. They can grate carrots etc.
Visit a Montessori school and see what they do w/ the kids. I work at a Montessori school. We have a three hour indoor work period. All of the materials are "hands on". WE do lots of cool stuff! Check out some Montessori mom Blogs and get great ideas!!

Get yourself a roll of butcher paper from the local educational supply store. You can put this down any time you feel like drawing or painting or cooking or making your own playdoh or slime. Lots of things to do! I would suggest getting an activity book for daycares.