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| 8 simple indoor activities for the winter months |
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As the days get shorter and temperatures dip, it's a time of year that many parents struggle to keep younger children entertained. No matter the weather, kids still have the same amount of energy, so how do you keep them busy and active without always turning on the TV?
Here are eight of our favourite, and very simple, indoor activities to keep children from bouncing off the walls during the winter months.
Indoor snowball fight
You need: white paper and a container.
Aussie winters might not bring snow outside, but kids can still enjoy a fun snowball fight indoors! Simply roll up balls of paper, or white socks, and give each child a bucket or container filled with pretend snowballs and let the fun begin! You can introduce rules, when it (inevitably) becomes more like a game of indoor dodge ball for the older children.
Indoor bowling
Transform the hallway into a bowling alley by standing up six or eight empty water bottles in a triangle and try and knock them down with a rubber ball (a handball works well). If the bottles fall over too easily, fill them up with a little water or dry rice for extra weight. If you don't have empty plastic bottles, toilet roll or kitchen roll tubes work just as well.
Pirate treasure
You need: Building blocks and aluminium foil.
Wrap several building blocks with aluminium foil and hide them around the house. Then challenge your little pirates to find the treasure, just remember where you hide them! You make it even more exciting by drawing up a treasure map or clues for them to follow.
Masking tape
It's amazing how many games you can create with a simple roll of masking tape!
- Tape different shapes onto the floor – zig zags, curvy lines – and see if they can tightrope walk along the tape. Make it harder by challenging them to go backwards!
- Tape lots of masking tape across an open doorway and throw balled up newspaper or cotton wool balls and see how many they can get to stick.
- Tape a hopscotch pattern on the floor.
- Create an imaginary dolls house buy taping an imaginary floorplan onto the floor and have your child design and furnish the house with drawings, dolls furniture, or LEGO creations.
Penguin racing
You need: A hacky-sack or small beanbag for each child.
Children stand side-by-side with their 'penguin egg' resting on their feet. Players have to shuffle across to the finish line without dropping their egg. First one across the line wins!
Indoor straw soccer
You need: Building blocks, 2 straws, a ping-pong ball.
Build a perimeter of building blocks either on a table or on the floor. These blocks are the edge of the soccer pitch. Then build a 'U' shape at each end to form a goal.
Each player has a straw, and the aim is to blow the ping-pong ball to try and score a goal.
This can also be altered to be a game of straw pool by taping paper cups onto the edges of the table to make pockets (so the rim of the cup lines up with the top of the table) instead of building goals, and having several coloured ping pong balls to blow into the cups.
Homemade snow
You need: baking soda and water.
Place 1 cup of baking soda into a bowl. Add 1 tbsp of water and mix well with a fork. Continue to add 1 tbsp of water until it reaches the consistency of snow.
Snowflake pictures
You need: sandpaper sheets and leftover wool.
Each child has a sheet of sandpaper. They can lay lengths of wool or cotton onto the sandpaper to make snowflake shapes. If you are looking for more embellishment, pompoms stick really well too!
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