Rainy Day Frugal Activities For Kids

We don’t get a lot of dreary rainy days here in Florida but we’ve had a few this week and that required me to get creative with things I could do with the kids. I thought I’d put together a handy dandy little list of my earth-shattering ideas here.

1. Read books. Seriously. I bet you never thought of that.
2. Do a puzzle
3. Build a fort with couch cushions and blankets
4. Play hide-and-seek. Preferrably find a place where the kids won’t find you for at least 30 minutes and take a magazine and cup of tea with you.
5. Let them stomp in mud puddles in the yard in their underwear. only if it’s warm though. no need for getting sick
6. Color
7. Bake
8. Put some photo albums or scrapbooks together
9. Organize the playroom
10. Tell each other scary stories
11. Play board games
12. Make a scavenger hunt
13. Make playdoh
2 1/2 C flour
1/2 c salt
2 Packets Koolaid
2 C boiling water
3 TBSP Oil
Combine all ingredients. You may have to add more
flour until it is not sticky anymore. Here in FL, I
have to use about 3 to 3 1/3 cups of flour. Just
depending on the humidity.
14. Make an indoor obstacle course
15. Play hopscotch - I got this idea from a friend to put a hopscotch board on my tile floor with painters tape. It’s really fun!
16. play beauty shop do hair, paint nails, play with makeup - this is probably only popular if you have girls at home but hey whatever
17. pretend you’re camping
18. have an indoor picnic on the living room floor
19. have storytime - my kids love when I host storytime like we’re at the library
20. plant seeds in containers indoors
21. make a mobile or windchime or whatever - get creative with materials around the house!
22. take lots of photos
23. play dress up
24. make soup together
25. make sock puppets - a couple old socks and a marker, some string and a couple buttons and you’re good to go

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April 8th, 2008 | Category: Frugality | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL

Alison:
April 8th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

What a great list - thanks for sharing.

Mrs. Micah:
April 8th, 2008 at 5:43 pm

We did a lot of that sort of thing when I was a kid! Some good memories there.

Mr. Stupid:
April 8th, 2008 at 6:09 pm

I’d like to expand on the “play board games” suggestion. Please don’t just blindly pick up Chutes & Ladders and Candyland. These aren’t games at all; they are just exercises in randomness. Sure they might teach kids to follow the rules and wait their turn, plus some pattern or color matching, but they do not offer any interesting decisions to make.

I recommend you check out the line of Haba games. My daughters’ current favorites are Animal Upon Animal (a nice dexterity game with animals) and Monza (a race game with some decision making required).

There are also good memory games from Rio Grande like Gulo Gulo.

I’ll be blogging about kids games in a few weeks, with some recommendations for each age.

hth,
mr stupid