28 Oct Rainy Day Activities for Your Toddler
As the nights draw closer, we can begin saying goodbye to long days playing outside and instead of watching the TV and using their Ipad as rainy-day distractions, we’ve compiled a list of activities from our Greenwich Nursery to keep your children occupied and having fun at home.
We’ve rounded up a list of fun, easy and mess-free activities that your toddler will love this winter!
1. Colour blast sensory bags
Sensory bags are a great way to work on fine motor skills with your little ones and this idea is one that makes no mess!
Not only is it a perfect way to stimulate their touch, the colour blast bags can also help with identifying colours and exploring colour mixing. Using painting colours squirt a sizeable amount into a strong zip lock bag and ask your little one zip up the bag and identify the different colours.
Ensuring that the bag is securely closed (!) you can start pushing the colours around within the bag, creating different tones as you go!
Blue and yellow make green!
This is a great activity that can be played again and again and as your little one becomes more confident in identifying colours you can ask them to mix the colour of choice.
2. Make your own music
Using household items such as toilet roll inserts, tupperware boxes, water bottles or any household container and a bit of tape you can turn your living room into a music hall. Fill the tubes and boxes with other household items or hard foods such as rice and uncooked pasta for maracas or turn over an old delivery box for a drum.
Learning sounds and creating music stimulates a range of development skills within your little one including intellectual, social and motor skills. It also allows creative juices to flow and brings out your child’s vibrant musical creativity.
3. Yoga
At Little Cubs Academy, our nursery in Greenwich and nursery in Forest Hill offer yoga to all of the children and staff.
Yoga is brilliant for little ones as it calms the mind while stretching and strengthening the body, making it an excellent activity to do with kids – especially those with bundles of energy! When practicing yoga, children learn how to listen to their bodies and notice their thoughts (skills that many adults are still working on!).
Through Yoga, little ones can learn how to find a sense of inner calm and self-esteem as well as developing flexibility, strength, and balance.
A tip for Yoga with the kids….. KEEP IT FUN!
If you have ever attended a kids’ yoga class, you know there are lots of stories and sounds involved. If you are going to be practicing with your child and want them to stay engaged, you need to make it fun, making noises such as woofs and meows.
4. Rice races
Rice races are a great way to practice focus, concentration, and fine motor skills with your toddler. Start by dividing a handful of uncooked rice into two plastic bowls and have an empty bowl handy. Give your child small plastic or wooden tweezers and grab a pair for yourself. Then, have a race to see who can be the first to transfer their rice into the empty bowl using the tweezers.
Incorporate learning into the race and count out each grain of rice as you transfer between bowls and have bundles of excitement each time a grain reaches the other side without falling on the floor. If your child is struggling because the grains of rice are too small, you may want to begin with O-shaped cereal or arts and crafts pom poms.
If you choose to use a mixture of the above, this will also allow you to practice colours and texture with your little ones, identifying as you go or selecting on queue.
5. Make marshmallow structures
It’s time to build! Use dried spaghetti and mini marshmallows to build anything your child can imagine! Think Lego – but better! This super fun activity will allow your little one to experiment with the strength of different shapes and configurations or you can use this opportunity to introduce geometry to your little ones. This activity will strengthen your child’s fine motor skills and also inspire creativity and the budding architect within.
Have fun this winter with these indoor activities you can enjoy with your little ones on rainy days!
At Little Cubs Academy both our Forest Hill Nursery and Greenwich Nursery believe that children learn through play and creativity and these activities will provide endless amounts of fun and learning at home.
If you would like more ideas for what you can do during the winter months, check out our Facebook page where we will be updating regularly with the activities that we offer in our Greenwich Nursery and Forest Hill Nursery.
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