Parents or caretakers of toddlers: what ways have you found to entertain the kids during the wintertime?

My son is also one and a half. We dance our days away. Sometimes he doesn’t go for the idea too long and starts pounding on the glass door “Doggy, doggy, doggy!” And I start to feel bad. I am not looking forward to the winter either. Sometimes when he gets entirely too bored I’ll let him take an extra bath just so he can play in the water. He likes playing hide and seek as well, just a little revised. I do all the hiding and yell his name. Eventually he finds me and he gets really excited. We wrestle a little bit, he likes to rough house… I’ll let the dogs in so it’s kind of like bringing the outside to him. I still try to let him get out a little bit, for atleast 30 minutes a day. I just keep him moving so he doesn’t seem to mind the cold too much. Good luck!!! I feel your pain. My little boy would live outside if I let him.

Dance parties, lots of drawing and art, play-dough (you can get recipes for the homemade stuff and the kids can actually help make it – mix in kool-aid for good scents and colors), build a pile of pillows and play “king of the hill”, gak (my boys LOVED gak), scavenger hunts (if the child can’t read use pictures), Cranium Hullabaloo is a fun and active game, but you don’t have to buy it, you can play your own version at home. Then of course there is my personal favorite, the family nap.

@Supermouse LOVE the family nap! I have two year old and my house has turned into the local pre-school since Christmas…

Paint, Draw, Scribble
Marbles! Throwing them and then spending hours retrieving them from under the sofa…
Playing drums
Listening to Nursery Rhyme CDs
Reading books
Again – Play Doe
Connect 4 (kids of any age seem to love it for some reason?)
Moon Sand
Building Blocks
Mattresses Down the Stairs (although mine’s a little young for this yet, which is a shame!)
Dancing
Feeding ducks
Kicking in Leaves
Jumping in Puddles
Bathing
Building a tent out of sheets in the living room
and when all else fails (or rather when you just want a break)...
T.V

x

Try gocitykids.com if you live near a decent sized city. They have all sorts of suggestions for museums, special happenings, library storytimes, etc.

ooh... and you could check out www.ichild.co.uk :-)

Throw a jellybean down their pants.

Freakin’ hilarious.

Reading and singing and talking to them also put them on the floor so they can crawl around and get stronger but make sure the area is clean and safe.

My kids spent hours in an empty cardboard box.

Personally I do puppet theatre, but that’s because I also like it. It can be hard if you’re not really into it. But even reading a story can be fun, especially if you do the different voices and so on. Basically kids want attention.

Now if you have more than one, things are harder to control, but at the same time you can let them play with each other and just make sure they don’t get killed (at least not too much). My daughter and her friend even play with the ball in the bedroom (but it’s a soft ball and nothing to break). Plastecene is a cheap and fun solution. And it’s safe as long as they don’t eat it. Also painting, as long as you don’t mind cleaning afterwards.

My daughter also enjoys having a bath, and especially in winter this is also a way to keep warm, so she can spend up to an hour in it just playing with her duck. But not all children like that.

Depending on the age there are also board games that you can play with children. Or even make your own games, maybe try to educate them at the same time. I teach mine the alphabet and ask her do draw the different letters, or we count different things or even play “name the planet”.