31 Bad Weather Activities and a GIVEAWAY
Bad weather + kids = misery
It can be so tough to keep kids entertained if bad weather is stopping you from going outside. Bad weather can really ruin a day. This rings especially true if you have two little kids who are bursting with energy.
Coupled with this is the concern that if you go to a child friendly spot then everyone else would have also thought of this idea.
I’ve put together some great ideas to keep the kids happy in the bad weather and it comes with an awesome giveaway courtesy of Kidorable.
Check out the bottom of the post for the details of the Giveaway
Let’s find the positives
I recently read a post about the benefits of chores for little kids and one of those benefits was keeping kids active. This not only made me think of chores differently but it encouraged me to think of ideas to keep the kids entertained when the weather is against me.
Here are 31 ideas for when the bad weather has you stuck. There are three categories
a) ideas to get you out the house
b) home based ideas
c) two part ideas
And if none of these brighten your day – enter the giveaway to win a great gift for your child.
Bad Weather Activities
Getting out the house
1. Grocery Shopping Treasure Hunt
Kids hate grocery shopping – well at least mine do. They are either dying of cold in the cheese and dairy section or dying of hunger in the bakery.
However, a game can improve even the worst situations. This is true for grocery shopping too. The best way to turn the awful task of grocery shopping into an awesome bad weather activity is to play “Grocery Shopping Treasure Hunt”.
How to play:
1. Make a list of the things that you need from the store. I used an abridged version.
2. Divide it up for the list between the two. Mine are little so they only get two items each.
3. Repeat the list the whole way to the store so that they don’t forget what they are looking for.
4. Walk the aisles until they find their items.
If you want you can get them something from the bakery or a piece of fruit as a treat – the winner can pick the treat but the loser can veto. Thankfully mine don’t
2. Explore a Museum or an Art Gallery
Museums and art galleries have changed since we were kids. They are now much more kid friendly and interactive.
3. Meet real life heroes
Impromptu visit to the police station or firehouse to meet real life heroes. My daughter was desperate to meet a real life policewomen so off we went to our local, safe and quiet police station. Our visit was clearly in order because the kids were even given balloons. My daughter was thrilled to meet a policewomen!
4. Ice Skating
Why not take the bad weather and amplify it – take the cold to the max and go ice-skating. I know of local ice skating arenas that have special kids sessions where they don’t have to wear ice-skates and can simply play on the ice.
5. Volunteer
There are so many places you can go to help your community. You could read to elderly people in a retired home or sick people in a hospital. Just seeing bright and happy faces would make a huge difference in those people’s lives.
6. Go on a date with your kids
Grab a coffee and a babychino. In the miserable weather a nice warm beverage won’t go amiss. I love taking the kids out for a babychino.
7. Muddy Puddles
Bad weather doesn’t mean you can’t take advance of the weather. Jump in some muddy puddles. I blame Peppa Pig for this obsession. My kids love getting their gum boots and rain coats on and heading outside to jump in some puddles.
8. Send family or friends who live elsewhere a postcard.
Take the kids out to choose postcards or spend the morning making letters or pictures. Head off to the post office to get some envelopes and stamps and put it in the post.
Make sure to warn the friends and family that it’s coming so that they can send you a photo or video of when it arrives so that the kids can see.
9. Go swimming
No I’m not crazy but on a cold day you can still get a swim in if you’re close to an indoor heated pool. Thankfully we have loads in Sydney that even have play areas for the kids with fun fountains and splash areas.
10. Try a family friendly restaurant
It may be hard to find at first but there are some great family friendly restaurants out there. Sometimes forgoing the meal you planned and all the housework and taking the kids out for lunch or dinner makes for a very special memory.
From my point of view what you want from a family friendly restaurant is:
– a kids menu
– kids activity or play area (even if the activity is just colouring in)
– high chairs
– family bathroom
If you have no idea about where to go out with the kids for a meal google “kids eat free” and the name of your suburb or city and you should find a good place to start with because you know that they are trying to target families.
11. Find your creative side
There are so many exciting arts and crafts for kids and what is better than letting your kids explore their creative side in someone else’s space.
Here are some ideas on the types of arts and crafts that are available:
– bread making
– painting
– robotics
– ceramics
– bear building
– sewing
– lego building
– sand art
– cooking classes
12. Take the kids to a movie
There are some great movies on for kids at the moment – Cars 3, Despicable Me 3 are just two on at the moment. This is generally the case during school holidays as the movie people time it like this on purpose.
Having said that there are some cinemas that show kids movies on set days of the week or monthly.
13. Practice Patience the fun way
Try a new form of active entertainment that also requires patience and focus. How about mini golf or bowling. We’ve even taken our two year old bowling and she had so much fun.
The tricks to ten pin bowling or indoor bowling are to:
– Only let your under 4s take turns and not have a whole game themselves; and
– Make sure the alleys have those foam rollers in so that your little ones don’t land up with gutter balls only
The tricks to mini golf or putt-putt are to:
– Check in advance that they cater for kids by way of smaller clubs
– Pay for no more than 9 holes. It will take you your whole life to do more with little kids.
– Don’t pay for a full game for your kids under the age of 3 unless they have really good hand-eye coordination otherwise you will spend most of the day walking around looking for the ball.
14. Take the stairs
If you live at the coast you should check out whether there are any lighthouses that are open. If there are no lighthouses, check if there are any bell towers or historical structures that can be climbed.
This is a great way to get energy out and is an adventure in itself.
15. To the arcade
Even as an adult I love arcade games – not the shooting or riding games but the games where you can win the most tickets. This is a great activity because it has so many fascinating aspects to it, my 4 year old is still enthralled by each aspect.
– exchanging your money for coins or tokens, so many coins if you give them a note
– choosing the games you want to play, it takes us forever to walk around and choose
– actually playing the game
– getting the tickets out the game
– handing your tickets
– choosing the toy or prize
Staying at Home
Some days you just don’t want to go outside. It can feel exhausting to have to fight with the kids to ensure that they’re wearing all the right gear. I completely understand and sympthatise. These ideas are for those days. These are the stay at home ideas.
16. Build a fort or tent.
This is another great Activities my kids love. We don’t have much space in our new home so I use the dining room chairs back to back but apart and put blankets over the top. The kids then bring pillows and soft toys.
17. Turn meal time into an indoor picnic
All you need is a throw and what ever you were going to feed the kids anyway. For me this is a real winner because it not only keeps my kids entertained but I also get them to eat.
You can even tell them that they can invite one toy to join the picnic.
18. Movie Day
Watch a movie together. I have some recommended movies that we have reviewed. We love snuggling up on the couch together and watching a family friendly movie.
19. Car creative
Set up a car track that goes over and under objects. You can use the coffee table with a cutting board or a tray to the lounge couch and then down to the floor. Pillows also make great bridges and arms chairs are great to go under.
20. Shake it off
Have a dance party! My son has loved dancing since he was little and it is so good for kids to have music and rhythm around them. A dance party is great for exposing the kids to music and also getting their energy out.
21. Hide and Seek
You wouldn’t believe it but a game of hide and seek inside the house goes a long way to keep the kids entertained. My 2 and 4 year old love it even though my 2 year old always hides in the same place and my 4 year old insists on only counting to 5.
22. Yogasize
There is so much available online including loads of yoga and exercise videos for kids. We have a great bash by pulling everything out the lounge and making an exercise space.
I must warn you though – attention spans do wane somewhat so this is not an activity that will last long.
23. Garage Fun
Got a garage? All you now need is some chalk and the world is your oyster. There are so many activities you can do. My preferred choice would be hop-scotch because it has two great aspects to it. First you get the kids to draw on the floor, what fun and then you get to expend energy hopping through the squares.
24. Craft
Craft – there are thousands of ideas online as this is probably the most popular of bad weather activities. If you’ve got no idea where to begin you can try:
– play doh
– pasta art
– drawing
– painting
– potato prints
25. Ballon badminton
Blow up and balloon and pass it to each other, counting how many times you can hit it with your hands without dropping it.
Even better, because it would be more time consuming, is to use some coloured felt tip pens and overtime you drop the balloon you write the number of successful passes on the balloon. This will also help the kids in learning to practice their counting and identify numbers.
26. Make a music video
Challenge the kids to find objects that make different sounds and different noises. Set these up and ask them to discover a beat and make up sounds or rhymes to go with.
When they’ve got it down to a fine art then bring out the phone and record the music video.
27. Indoor treasure hunt
Write out a list of objects that you know are easy to find around the house. Better yet, type it up and print out a few copies to have on hand. Here are some ideas for the kids to find:
– a certain coloured shoe (in our house it would be pink or blue or green)
– a plastic spoon. Our kids cutlery draw is easily accessible to the kids.
– an animal story book
– a red car
– a piece of clean washing (at least then I can fold it up and put it away)
– a blanket
Your household mess staples may be slightly different to yours so feel free to swap my ideas out with your own.
28. Help-a-mum-playdate
Dealing with kids is a whole lot easier when there are two mums to cling to each other and their coffees. Invite close friends over for a playdate – a baking party, tent party, dance party or pj day. What is even better is if you make it two sets of families and then rotate, each family getting a turn.
Two Part Activities
29. Bake with the kids.
Take the kids to the shops in the morning to chose the ingredients and then make everything together after lunch. The two things we love to make with the kids are cake and pizza.
30. Library Books
Visit your local library and choose some books together.
You can read one or two books together at the library for a change of scenery and then bring the others home. Let the kids chose based on a theme – books about school, books about animals, you get the drift.
31. Go Green
Head off to your local hardware store and buy some seeds and soil.
You can use old jam jars or any container in the beginning. If you want things to move quickly you could just pour the seeds between two pieces of wet cotton wool but they won’t grow properly, they will ultimately need soil. We learnt this the hard way.
Great Giveaway
Our friends at Kidorable have offered two of their gorgeous umbrellas to two lucky readers valued at $18 each.
All you have to do is comment below with your favourite Bad Weather Activity or the Kidorable umbrella you think would be perfect for your child.
To have a look at the variety of umbrellas available follow the link to Kidorable, there are some really cute ones.
Each of the umbrellas is perfectly made to suit little people, aside from the great themes and characters available. Kidorable has ensured that eat umbrella is:
- lightweight, child-safe nylon umbrella
- equipped with an easy to grip alien handle for extra play value
- child-sized for those little hands (measures 24″ long and 27″ diameter open)
Entering the Giveaway
Please make sure you are familiar with our terms and conditions before entering the giveaway.
The competition is open from Wednesday, 14 June to Friday, 23 June. Competition closes midnight on Friday 23 June. Winners will be picked and notified by email within 48 hours of the competition closing and announced on AllThingsMomSydney.com on Tuesday, 27 June 2017.
This competition is open only to our North American readers so if you are based in the USA or Canada be sure to enter.
All you have to do is comment below with your favourite Bad Weather Activity or the Kidorable umbrella you think would be perfect for your child.
♦
The competition part of this post is sponsored by Kidorable.
All of the content and views are entirely the writer’s own.
♦
For specific ideas relating to Sydney read the 99 Rainy Day Activities.
(to be honest, I think there may actually be 101 activities listed there)
My favourite bad weather activity is playing board games.
The Pandambrello!
The space or dinosaur one!
I love the frog umbrella.
Our favorite bad weather activity would have to be playing Monopoly 🙂
My favorite Bad Weather Activity is putting together jigsaw puzzles.
My girls would absolutely love the Panda umbrella!
The dinosaur umbrella would be perfect for my son. racheljeramie(at)gmail.com
my daughter would love the panda one so cute
usually we do an art activity or movie or read so much to do
forgot my daughter would love the ballerina one
I love the dinosaur one because the grandsons would love it
we like to bake and make crafts,,i think my grandson would love the pirate umbrella
Our favorite rainy day activities consist of building forts and watching movies
I love the Mermaid Umbrella. On rainy days, we use our flash cards, and we also read and color.
I love the frog umbrella the best!
My youngest daughter would love to have the ballerina umbrella!
I think the Mermaid umbrella would be great for my niece!
Very nice list of things kids can do. I book marked it.
I think my granddaughter would prefer the ballerina umbrella, since I don’t see Paw Patrol in the group!
Cooking and science. We love the dinosaur umbrella
Our face bad weather activity is watecolor painting
We like to make cookies and then eat them while we are reading some good books.
We like the ballerina umbrella
My toddler would love the cat umbrella because she’s obsessed with cats lately.
My favorite bad weather activity is to take out our wish scrapbooks we all make. We like to look at them and then add our wishes for where we would like to go someday and what we would do when we got there. We make pictures or cut some out of magazines.
Laurie Emerson
We love to read books and snuggle on the couch and watch a movie!
We make cupcakes!
Well.. you could have a “Rainy Day Jar”. You take a jar and fill it up with popsicle sticks or pieces of paper that have different activities that you and your child come up with together. One could be play a board game. One could be build a tent. One could be play hide and seek. One could be make a craft and put whatever craft you guys come up with and put that on the stick or paper. This way when there is a rainy day, there is a jar full of ideas to do. You can pull out just one for the day or 3 or 4. It’s up to you!
My boys would LOVE the outer space umbrella! 🙂
We love to color and watch our shows that need some catching up on.
My daughter would love the ballerina umbrella!
My granddaughter’s favorite would be the Panda.
The dinosaur or pirate Kidorable umbrellas are so cute! We play a lot of board games, do puzzles, and read LOTS of books.
in bad weather we like to watch movies or do crafts
My grandson would love the panda or the dinosaur umbrella. thanks for the chance.
Our kids love the Panda Bear Umbrella most of all! My favorite bad-weather activity would be watching movies with the family!
Andysavi.Mom@gmail.com
We like doing arts and crafts. I love the panda umbrella!!!!
My little one would love the panda umbrella!
We will bake some cookies to make it through the rain and have our boxes of crafts built up so we can make something wonderful.
This gramma loves to Colorado with the granddaughters or do jigsaw puzzles.
Now I have list of new things I can do with them.
we play board games or cards or make it a movie day with popcorn ….We’d love the Panda Umbrella
The fireman umbrella is cute.
My niece would love the panda bear umbrella! She is super energetic and loves the outdoor! She would be so excited and thrilled like a jolly teddy bear!
we like to play board games when it is rainy outside.
I would love the cat umbrella! So cute. My favourite rainy day activity is doing a puzzle.
My niece would love the panda bear umbrella.
My best friends daughter loves animals and would enjoy the kitty umbrella.
the spongebob squarepants umbrella
My daughter loves making slime when we have yucky weather out. Her favorite recipe is shaving cream, saline and glue.
I love baking with kids
The cat umbrella is adorable.
I think their Panda Umbrella is very cute!
My grandson would love the space umbrella to make Chicago bad weather fun!
I think my daughter would love the Lucky Cat Umbrella.
My son loves “kitty cats” and loves playing in the rain, but on stormy days we like to cuddle up together and watch his favorite movies!
The band umbrella would be well loved!
entry form name: Marlene V
love the fireman umbrella . we like to have a dance party when it’s rainy
cookie baking! i love love love that spaceship one
My niece would love the panda umbrella. So cute!
My daughter would love the panda
I really like the orange cat umbrella for my niece Harlow.
my toddler would love the dino one! we love to paint and play playdough when its a rainy day
My niece will love the ballerina umbrella!
My son would love the panda umbrella!
We like to go to the rec center and swim in the indoor pool when it is rainy outside.
My son would love the astronaut/space umbrella! So cute!
All the umbrellas are so cute! We like reading.
My nephew would love the dinosaur umbrella.
I’m guilty of having the kids play video games with me when it’s raining. My daughters would love the Dora umbrella.
Thanks for the opportunity to win!
I think the indoor treasure hunt would be so much fun!
Movie day all the way, so many incredible must watch movies on my list!!!
I love going bowling or to the movies.
My favorite bad weather activity is watching movies
the panda umbrella
We read alot and play games on rainy days
We do arts and crafts!
We love to lay board games during bad weather
~Jonnie
We’d love the Dora umbrella. Such a neat blog and prize.
I like to paint when there is bad weather.
I think my daughter would like the Cat Umbrella. They are all so cute!
MY DAUGHTER WOULD LOVE HE DORA UMBRELLA 🙂
My son would love the dinosaur umbrella.
The ballerina one would be her favorite. Or maybe one of the animals. We love to make wax sculptures on rainy days.
My little granddaughter would love the Ballerina Umbrella.
My girls would probably choose the ballerina one, but I love the frog! Speaking of love, great idea for the grocery scavenger hunt. As far as crummy weather activities, I like bathtub painting. I squirt shaving cream and paint in the bath and let my kids go at it!
Love this list! My favorite activity would be fort/tent building–I remember doing that myself when I was a kid, and it was the best thing ever, especially when the adults would crawl in and play along!
I think my son would like the dinosaur umbrella. He loves Dinosaurs.
I love the panda bear umbrella and my favorite rainy day activity is to build tents in the livingroom.
Our favorite rainy day activity is to bake and decorate sugar cookies!
My favorite bad weather activity is staying inside reading.
My little boy is Dino obsessed so he’d flip over the dinosaur. My favorite rainy day activity is water colors- brings something cheery to a dreary day. Awesome blog. Love all the suggestions!