Cabin Fever and Indoor Activities for Preschoolers
You're stuck inside ... and your kids are climbing the walls! Here are a whole bunch of fun indoor activities to keep them (and you!) from getting bored (or worse, getting cabin fever) when rainy days (or snow days, or sick days ...) keep you cooped up.
- Test your kid's memory with the Missing Objects Game.
- Mix up a batch of milk paint and let your kid create a masterpiece (or 10).
- Play I Spy with a flashlight.
- Set up an indoor obstacle course.
- Make a musical instrument out of a recycled TP roll and some wax paper.
- Turn a shoebox and the sofa into a mini-amusement park ride for your kid's dolls.
- Crank the music and transform your living room into a bubble-filled disco.
- Have your kid paint with corncobs instead of paintbrushes.
- Invite your kid to make a game out of sorting through your junk drawer. (It's a twofer!)
- Send your kid on a seated scavenger hunt through your old magazines.
- Invite your kid to paint circles with paper cups and recycled TP rolls.
- Make giant dominoes out of cereal boxes.
- Give your kid's mind a workout with this shape-matching game.
- Hone your kid's vocab skills with a silly word-rhyming game.
- Play music on a hidden CD player or iPod and have your kid search for the source of the sound.
- Sing a song to your kid and have her repeat the tune back to you.
- Create patterns out of breakfast cereal and have your kid try to replicate them.
- Invite your kid to "bake" a felt cake with pasta "candles."
- Make homemade play-dough.
- Put big masking-tape shapes on the floor and have the kids trace and walk them.
- Invite your kid to make a newspaper hat.
- Make a busy box of "treasures" (i.e., stuff you have lying around the house) to keep your kid busy.
- Create a balance beam out of phone books and have your kid do a little gymnastics routine.
- Get your kid's crazies out with this winter-themed game of indoor tag.
- Set up some empty plastic bottles as "pins" and challenge your kid to an indoor bowling game.
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