So it
raining your at home with the kid and you have had it with the computer so what
do you do? Well you can do lots of things to bring you and your little one together
and have fun .when it raining and you can’t go out I a great opportunity to do
some great bonding and get back to the art of talking with your kids so here are a few ideas from around the
internet which might help you get a lot of fun out of a rainy day or a very hot
day when it so sunny you can’t go out or any time .
So first
the preschoolers
Giant Dot-to-Dot!
A fun fine and gross motor skills activity is a giant dot-to-dot. You may
remember New Kid working on his toddler dot-to-dot a
few years back, and now he likes to get down with his marker on the
floor. I love the way a giant floor connect-the-dots activity gets him
exercising both his small and large motor muscles together.
You don’t need to arrange the dots to reveal a picture when connected. I
simply drew large dots and numbers in a random pattern on a large piece of
butcher paper. For this particular puzzle, I used several colors, so it was
easier for him to locate sequential numbers: 1-5 were blue, 6-10 were green and
so forth. He enjoyed this activity so much he wanted to do it again, but I
didn’t even need to make a new one, he simply chose a different colored pen.
I found this one here
The listening game
One of Colla’s go-to games for her preschoolers
and grandchildren, this game is sure to both educate and delight little ones.
Take out several miscellaneous items. Have the children look at all the items,
and then take them away. Next, ask one child to hide his or her eyes and listen
as you pick up an item and make sounds with it. Ask the child to guess which
item made the sound. Examples of items might be a comb (run your fingers along
it), a glass (gently tap it), cymbals, shakers, sandpaper, blocks rubbed
together, a pot and spoon. Be creative and have fun!
Bubbles
You don’t have to go outside to enjoy bubbles. For this game, you need a plate and straw for each player, some dishwashing soap and water. Place a dime-size drop of dish soap at the centre of each plate. Pour a little water onto the plate and gently mix with the dish soap until some suds start to form. Have the kids place the straw in the suds and blow very gently. Watch as massive bubbles start to form. To make this competitive, see who blows the biggest, or longest-lasting, bubble.Simon Says
This traditional favourite will never get old. To start, choose one player (probably a parent for the first round) to be Simon. The rest of the players will gather in a circle or line in front of Simon as he calls out actions starting with the phrase “Simon says”: “Simon says…touch your toes.” The players then have to copy Simon’s action, touching their toes. If Simon calls out an action without uttering the phrase “Simon says,” the kids must not do the action. If a child touches his toes when Simon didn’t say…, he or she is out of the game. There are lots of great ways Simon can trick players into doing actions when Simon didn’t say: Simon can perform an action without uttering a command, for example, or he can perform an action that doesn’t correspond with the command. Fun! The last player left in the game wins and becomes the next Simon.Touch-and-feel box
Most preschoolers flock to the classroom sensory table as soon as the teachers pull it out. So there is little doubt they will love this entertaining challenge. Find a shoe box or any box that has a lid on it. Cut a hole in one of the sides of the box —large enough for your child to fit her hand in. If you want, get creative and decorate the box with glitter and question marks. When you’re ready to play, put an item inside the box and have your children guess what it is. They can ask questions about the item if they need to, or you can offer clues. Get as ooey-gooey as you wish (fresh pumpkin seeds or slimy spaghetti are great choices for Halloween), or use such simple objects as a brush, a toy, a piece of fruit. To make it competitive, you can give a point to the first child to name the object.I founds these here
and now for the older kids
Battleship
For two players. Here’s another popular game you can
play without the official version. All you need is graph
paper. Each player needs two grids. Label each grid by writing numbers
across the top and letters down the side, so that the squares are easily
identified as A8 or F5. One grid will be for locating your own ships, the other
for recording shots against your opponent’s ships. Each player places three or
four “ships” on his grid, then let the guessing begin. The first person to sink all the other person’s ships wins.
Sprouts
If you can’t quite master drawing a neat grid of dots, you might find
this game easier. Draw dots randomly all over the paper. The first player draws
a line between any two dots, and draws another dot in the middle of that line.
The next player draws a line between any two dots, and puts a dot in the middle
of that line. No lines may cross each other, but they don’t have to be
straight, so they can loop around other lines. Only three lines in total can
emerge from any one dot. The dots put in the middle of the lines already have
two lines connecting them to the two other dots, so they can only have one more
line. The game continues until no more lines can be drawn. The person who did
the last line is the winner.
Why? Because.
Each person writes down a question beginning with why (for example, Why
do dogs bark?). Adults can help with the writing for children who find this
difficult. Fold the top over to hide the question, and pass to the next person
who, without looking at the question, writes an answer starting with Because
(for example, Because chocolate tastes good). Then read out all the
questions and answers.
All these are fun and should get you and your kids talking which is the
point of a rainy day.
