It is winter season again! This means more time for building a snowman, ice skating, and hot chocolate! But as it gets icy and frigid cold, we will definitely end up getting stuck at home. While the parents will enjoy cooking, reading, and spending quiet time with their families, the kids become restless. While it is best to keep our kids actively exploring outdoors, times like these give them more harm than good. So, it brings us back to the question: What do I do to keep the fun during the cold winter season? Surely we don’t want the kids to sit on the couch looking at their screens all day.
Here are five indoor activities we suggest that will keep your kiddos active and alive!
- Imaginative Treasure Hunt
Create a treasure map and prepare some treats for the treasure chest. Exploring around the house in finding the hidden treasure will encourage the kids to think outside the box and creativity. Why not dress up your kids with pirate costumes to make it more exciting and realistic!
- Arts and Crafts
One way to get your kid’s attention is to make a dull activity more exciting by adding a dash of creativity. Doing arts and crafts will keep your kids busy and can limit their screen time. Give them some play dough to form shapes with, teach them some experiments using slimes, write with colorful chalks, or allow them to paint by hand whatever they want. It could get a little messy, but these things can help them to develop their fine motor skills and use their imagination to express themselves. - Build a Fort
Whether it is made out of cardboard boxes, pillows, or blankets, kids will surely fall in love with it. Building a fort will have a lot of advantages while your kids cannot go outside to play. They can make a reading nook at the top of the fort with their favorite pillows and stuffed animals, or even create their own castle and space ships. At the end of the day, having a fort at home might be your kid’s favorite new “yes” space.
- Make an obstacle course
Why not bring the outdoor obstacle course inside your home? Building an obstacle course is not as complicated as it may sound, in fact, you can DIY! Use your living room, play “the floor is lava!”, line up your pillows and cushions, use your tables and chairs as tunnels, gather your books to make mazes, and put tapes on the floors to make paths or trails. In this way, they not only release their energies and fun, but they’ll develop and enhance strength and balance.
- Bake and Cook
Baking and cooking with your kids may seem messy when kids help out in preparing food, but it is one of the best bonding experiences you can have with your kids, you can even have the whole family prepare the food and table together. It will be a great opportunity to teach them to cook, improve their math skills by measuring out ingredients, develop their reading skills by reading out the ingredients, and promote self-confidence that they were able to take part in preparing the food that the whole family will eat at the table.
Don’t stop the fun! There are tons of activities you can do indoors with your kids. The possibilities are endless and the limit is your imagination. Give them the right activities so they can have fun while playing and learning essential life skills. Keep warm and keep moving this winter season, families!
