Stuff to Do When You’re Stuck Inside

Yesterday the speaker for my moms’ group gave us a lot of awesome ideas for stuff to do outside when the weather gets warmer, but since it’s only the beginning of March & we’ve got a while before that happens around here, I thought today I’d share some ideas for things to do inside with your kids.

Here are a few ideas from my Aunt Charlotte, retired educator extraordinaire

• Take a sweet potato & put it in a drinking glass, half-submerged in water. Watch it over the next few weeks as it grows a vine.
• Place a stalk of celery, with leaves still on it, in a glass of water colored with food coloring. Watch the plant “drink” the water over the next day or so as the leaves at the top begin to change color.
• Create a scavenger hunt inside the house

And a few of our own:

• Use toothpicks & mini marshmallows to build sculptures (if you are homeschooling this is also a great way to demonstrate the concept of a vertex)
• Squirt shaving creme on the kitchen table & practice writing shapes, letters, and numbers
• Plant an indoor herb garden, watch the plants grow, then cut & cook with them
• A.C Moore sells balsa wood model airplanes for $1. They are fun to build & paint.
• Fill a large bowl with water, spread a towel out on the floor, & let the kids have at it with cooking utensils.
• Use pudding or icing to fingerprint on rice cakes at snack time.
• Make English muffin pizzas
• Give the kids a disposable camera, let them take all of the pictures, then have them developed & allow them to make a scrapbook or collage out of the pictures
• Turn out the lights and play indoor “laser tag” with flashlights.
• Have a “snowball” fight with clean socks
• Allow older kids to use dry erase markers to decorate a window or mirror
• Create a crystallized picture by painting with a salt/water paste onto construction paper
• Older children can use a q-tip to paint small amounts of bleach onto construction paper (if you are homeschooling this is great to represent a chemical change)
• Have the kids design a menu for tonight’s dinner
• Have a paper airplane race
• Use toilet paper or paper towel tubes to create a race track for marbles.
• Order blank books here for about $2 and let the kids create their own books.
• Melt crayon shavings between two sheets of wax paper with an iron to make “stained glass”
• Use fabric markers to color on old t-shirts
• Make cards to mail to a local nursing home

If you have more ideas for us, please add them to the comment section.

And if you’re looking for ways to keep busy on a budget during warm weather, check out this post with over 20 ideas!