My children are currently sitting at home, looking at their sixth snow day of the winter of 2011. While most of the parents I know are slowly going crazy from all the work piling up that they never have time to accomplish, their children are going extra crazy.
We live in a small city condo and my children are so tired of staring at our four walls. They're lucky to have one another, but I think they're even starting to get tired of each other. If your kids are like mine and need constant supervision, then good luck to you.
Luckily, there are many, many winter activities for them to do that don't involve freezing to death. Here are 50 of them:
- Have a floor picnic
- Use a bag of cotton balls for an indoor "snowball fight"
- Let the kids play with measuring cups, spoons, bowls, and a bag of rice (keep a vacuum on hand!)
- Treasure hunt through the house
- Play with cardboard boxes: You can build robots, ships, doll houses, and more.
- Shrinky Dinks: Jewelry, dolls, travel tags ... all sorts of fun.
- Cupcake decorating contests
- Board games
- Making up our own board games
- Re-illustrate/re-write old books
- Roller blading: Check out an indoor rink near you!
- Indoor playgrounds
- Ice skating at a rink
- XC skiing: The parents move so fast, everyone stays warm.
- Snowshoeing (see above): If your kids are little, pull them in a pulk!
- Fairy hunting: Sprinkle a little glitter around the house and imaginations can go CRAZY.
- Video games
- Make Play-doh
- Go through summer clothing and pretend it's summer
- Make frozen mocktails, fill the bath, and have a “beach party”
- Build a fort
- Make a mural
- Bake Valentine’s cookies
- Make homemade Valentines
- Play paper dolls
- Pop popcorn and have a movie-fest
- Make homemade pizza
- Make s’mores in the microwave
- Charades
- Pictionary
- Name that tune
- Library story hour
- Toy store singalongs
- Various indoor playspaces
- Open pool time at the gym
- Arts & crafts open studies
- Bring the outside toys inside (given a good washing first)
- Dance parties
- Indoor tag
- Hide & seek
- Fill the bathtub with snow and play inside
- Bubble blowing
- Homemade bowling with balls and bottles
- Round Robin storytelling
- Ring Around the Rosy 
- Indoor camping: Bring your sleeping bags into the living room, tell ghost stories, and all sleep there.
- Reading books
- Trying on Mommy's clothing
- Playing "beauty shop"
- Making snow ice cream
How do you spend winter days?
Images © iStock.com/pixdeluxe; via r0Kk/Flickr
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