We still face many winter weeks indoors with the kids. KIDFUN: 401 Easy Ideas for Play, a book by Sharla Feldscher, can come to the rescue… with tips to occupy your kids’ time creatively and filled with fun, excluding electronics. After all, the kids have enough use of computers and electronics for virtual education. As Dr. Jill Clark, CEO of Philadelphia Charter School for Arts & Sciences, said, “Play is so important to children. Kids need to play as they learn… it’s the fun they remember!”
Below are fun-filled suggestions for play at home, when kids are stuck indoors. Sharla Feldscher, author, play expert and TV personality, offers these ideas from her newest book. Using stuff already in the home, they run the gamut from indoor physical play, to snowy and rainy-day fun to more quiet activities that will fill their minds with imaginative escape.
Indoor Volleyball Or Badminton
Need a little indoor exercise? Balloons are the answer. They are small, light, practically damage-proof, and perfect as the ball in a game of volleyball or as the birdie in badminton. Here’s how you can do it — tie a string or rope to the top of two chairs. Pull the chairs apart wide enough to designate the playing area with the string as the net. Then, if playing badminton, give each player a paper plate. The balloon is the birdie or the ball (if playing volleyball.) It’s fun… active… and damage-proof!
Balloon Bonus
Keep a bag of balloons handy. They are good for all sorts of diversions: a game of catch, rolling races along a path on the floor. They can cheer up a sick room or make a dining table feel festive!
Animal Charades
Here’s an activity, ideal for all animal lovers! Ask your child to think of an animal and imitate its actions. He can’t tell you what it is. You have to guess. Her job is to help you guess as quickly as possible. Once you guess, you take a turn. After each of you has guessed successfully, you might want to make a list of all the animals you imitated and look for their images online. They can be printed out and pasted into an “animal book,” perhaps in groups like wild animals, farm animals, and pets.
Car Race
If your kids love toy cars, organize races against the clock. Set up a long track with tape or string on the floor. Make sure there is a start and a finish line. Using a kitchen timer or a stopwatch, let your children organize car races along the track and see who gets the best time. If the cars are in danger of veering into a wall or furniture, use pillows for protection.
Kitchen Pool
You can play pool — right on the kitchen table. And don’t be surprised if older siblings, parents and grandparents get in on the act!
First, set up the pool table, meaning the kitchen table, with pockets on the edge by hanging them off the sides and on the corners. It’s easy. The pockets are small paper cups that are taped along the edge of the table. Tape each cup so that it is flush with the edge of the table or just a smidge lower.
Next, make the cue stick with a plastic drinking straw and a strand of raw spaghetti. Place the spaghetti inside the straw and slide it back and forth. You’ll see it has action to it.
Make the ball with something from the kitchen that is small and round like Cheerios, sunflower seeds in the shell or M & M’s.
Now have your child practice a bit pushing the “ball” along the table with the “cue stick” so that it lands in the “pocket.” Children can do this alone or you can challenge each other. Devise a scoring system based on the number of times the “ball” lands in the “pocket.” It’s fun — try it yourself!
Artful Storage
Find empty boxes that would be good sizes to store books, toy cars, scarves, dolls, etc. Have the kids select the box that would be best for a specific toy or play object. They then decide how to decorate the box. They can use paints or crayons but the box could be decorated with a picture that describes the object inside. Kids can draw the picture or download and print one from the Internet. Let the box dry and then find the best place in the room (or elsewhere) to store these boxes. Kids will take great pride in these creations!
Our Favorite Things
For some good cheer on a dreary day that’s fun for kids and adults, make a still life of your favorite things. First, gather these things in one place, on a table. Then look online for images of Still Life paintings. Talk about how a vase is placed in one spot, a glass in another, etc. Now, you and your child design your still life, any style you like.
Then photograph them. What a great photo memory of your favorite things you’ll have. Let your child take pictures, too, shooting from different angles to see what he likes best. You could even print out these pictures and make a book of My Favorite Things! (Remember to date it and sign it.)
Cooking In The Snow
Added to typical fun in the snow, is “cooking in the snow” — give the kids varying sizes of plastic bowls, a large spoon, a spatula, and a measuring cup. That’s all they need for their imagination to fly as they prepare imaginary meals outdoors. Once they tire of that — give them food color and clear plastic drinking cups to make colorful collections of various colors of snow. They can mix the colors, too. My kids once took droplets of food color and painted with the snow as their canvas. They can even make droplets of dots leading to a path!
Sleigh Ride
A neighbor once told me that he blew up the kids’ plastic wading pool and it made a great sleigh for the snow. He was willing to pull the kids along to shouts of delight from them.
Another neighbor, who didn’t have a wading pool, broke up a cardboard carton to make it flat. It slid fabulously along the snow as he pulled them on that.
Connect The Raindrops
If it isn’t raining too hard, open the window and let your child hold a piece of construction paper or gray cardboard out the window. Tell her she must pull it back in by the time you count to five. When she pulls it back in, you’ll see dark spots from the water. Let your child connect the dots quickly in any sequence she wishes. After they dry, she can experiment with filling in sections of her rain design.
About Sharla Feldscher:
Sharla Feldscher has always been a “kid believer.” She has written about children and families for magazines, newspapers and is the author of eight books including two KIDFUN Activity Books published by HarperCollins. She’s been called “A teacher’s teacher” and “The best friend a kid could have.” Sharla is a frequent guest on television and currently has an on-going KIDFUN feature on PHL 17 TV in Philadelphia. She has written series of features for many media outlets including the Philadelphia Daily News (for eight years), KYW Newsradio, The Phillies, New York Family Magazine, LA Family Magazine, South Jersey Magazine and more. KIDFUN: 401 Easy Ideas for Play is $9.95 in paperback and $5.99 for eBook. It is available amazon.com and wherever books are sold. Learn more about KIDFUN by visiting www.kidfunandmore.com.