After a beautiful summer, the last couple of weeks has seen our weather take a turn for the worse. Here are some affordable rainy day home activities to help your family combat cabin fever through the coming winter months.
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Make your own Flubber!
Mixture 1
1 ½ cups of warm water
2 cups of Elmers Glue
Food colouring
Mix well
Mixture 2
3 tsp of Borax
1 Cup of warm water
Mix well
Combine Mixture 1 with Mixture 2
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Family Band!
Kids LOVE to make noise, so start a ruckus! Besides banging on pots and pans, your kids can also make these easy homemade instruments.
Shakers: Collect cans with plastic lids -- such as potato-chip cans or coffee cans. Fill them with rice or dry beans. Fasten the lids securely with tape, and help your child decorate the outside. Then let them shake, shake, shake.
Drums: Remove the covers of several clean, empty cans, and cover the edges with duct tape. Then tape several cans together in a circle and let your toddler drum away. Compare the sounds of the cans.
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Stealthy Thieves...
How slippery are your kids? Here's a fun game to test their ability to be exceptionally quiet!
In this game, one person sits in a chair with a key chain full of keys or another clangy item placed on the floor underneath. The "keeper of the keys" then closes his or her eyes and listens carefully for the sound of an approaching "thief." When the keeper hears a suspicious sound, he or she tries to thwart the attempted act by pointing in the direction of the sound. If the pointing is accurate, the thief is eliminated from the game. If, however, the thief can remove the keys without getting pointed at, the mission is a success, and a new keeper takes the chair.
Maybe you can have too many cooks in the kitchen, but you can't have too many thieves in this activity, especially thieves who can work together to distract the keeper of the keys!
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Bowl-a-Rama
Small, empty water bottles and a rubber ball are all you need to transform the lounge into a bowling alley. Six bottles should suffice for bowling pins; if the bottles fall over too easily, fill them up with water or rice to add some weight.
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Go for a Swim
Who said bath time is only for night? Fill the tub with bubble bath, or blow bubbles and let the kids pop 'em. Toss in a few toys that need a clean (the plastic food set? All the matchbox cars) and you've got one less thing on your to do list.
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Toothpick and Marshmallow Sculptures
Get their creative juices flowing. What can you make using only toothpicks and marshmallows?
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ScavengerHunt
Pick a theme, any theme, colours patterns, letters, numbers etc. and hunt around the house to see how many you can find. Make it official with a clipboard and check off items as you go. Crawl around, reach up high and get down low.
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Masking Tape Marvels
Who would have thought a roll of masking tape could be so much fun? Make a hopscotch, mock balance beam, a huge racing track, or the floor plan of the dream doll house.
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Indoor Obstacle Course
The possibilities are endless with this one. Make use of couch cushions, the laundry basket for "shooting hoops", make an obstacle course of brightly coloured string, moves in place, like running, jumping, hopping. Increase the excitement by adding a timer and cheering them on.
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High Tea at Home
The kids can be involved from start to finish with this one. Get them into helping out with preparing the food, decorating and setting the table, dressing up and most importantly the clean up afterwards.
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