Anyone with kids will know that the best option for entertaining them is to take them out and about somewhere for a while – but that’s not always possible. If you live a major city like London and have used the services of agencies such as London Property Management consultants http://bowerypropertyfinders.com there will obviously be lots more to do than say a small village or town, so it’s a good strategy to have a variety of ideas for indoor activities available for those rainy days.
You can even theme the activities according to the season. For instance, if you’re stuck inside in the depths of winter, why not make your own ice sculptures at home? With the addition of simple food colouring, these can become magical rainbow-hued creations.
And some of the coloured ice you make can also be used as a science experiment with the addition of salt to affect its melting point – the results are visually appealing and also teach the kids about physics. There are more ideas for introducing little ones to science at sciencefun.org.
Salt can also be applied to watercolour paintings and left overnight to make them appear as if it’s been snowing in the painting – an extra seasonal twist to an old classic kids’ activity.
Sculpture
Another craft which can keeps kids of all ages amused for a surprisingly long time is building sculptures. There are many materials which can be used for this, but it’s always good if they can be cheap or free and even better if they are recycling something which might otherwise be thrown out.
Next time you get a large parcel with loads of polystyrene packing, why not use that as the basis for a sculpture session with your kids? It can easily be cut, coloured in, and have wooden or wire skewers placed through it in any direction. Once you’ve got your basic structure, you can use all sorts of embellishments such as beads, buttons, feathers and glitter to make a truly spectacular sculpture.
Baking
This is another good bet, and kids can get involved from a young age, doing the basic tasks with close supervision (and plenty of plastic sheeting on the floor). Making biscuits is one of the simplest recipes and processes, but the end product is also very versatile, can be cut into any shape that you can make a stencil for and can be decorated with icing, glitter, food colouring or chocolate – or even all four. You can also get a huge range of stamps at a relatively low cost to emboss designs on biscuits or cookies. So whether your little ones are into dinosaurs, animals, diggers or butterflies, the chances are you can make a biscuit to fit that theme. It’s also a great life skill to get instilled into kids early on.
And when the weather is good enough for a trip away, why not check out the Devon coast for more arts and crafts inspiration? There are many places to see paintings in Devon, but one of the leading centres for art is in the village of Beer.
One final tip: keep a list of possible activity ideas to hand for any last-minute unexpected indoor days so you don’t have to spend time looking for inspiration while the kids are kicking up a fuss.