Six on Sunday - rainy day ideas

Due to illness/teething/bad weather we've had a quite a few days indoors recently. When you have a very energetic little boy it can be hard to know how best to keep him occupied on those days.

1. Play dough 
As a kid I remember my mum making home made play dough for us and had been looking for an excuse to give it a try. The basic recipe is:

1 cup plain flour
1 cup warm water
half cup salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon cream of tartar
food colouring

Just mix it together over a low heat until it pulls away from the sides and clumps together. If it's still sticky cook it a bit longer. We didn't have any cream of tartar and didn't want to walk to the shop in the rain to get any so we made ours without and it still turned out ok. One thing I learned was make sure you mix the food colouring with the water before adding it instead of trying to add it after cooking - much less messy and better results too.

For some more exciting play dough recipes including scented, glittery or glow in the dark go to Nurture store for loads of great ideas.

2. Nursery rhyme puppets
Little J is just about old enough to handle basic arts and crafts so I decided to look for some age appropriate crafts to try. He loves singing songs so I was thrilled to stumble across some nursery rhyme themed crafts. He loves singing itsy bitsy spider so we decided to give that craft a go. I cut out all the pieces while he was having his nap so there would be no chance of him getting hold of the scissors. When nap time was over I handed him a bag of parts and we started to assemble our spiders together. He loved sticking on the googly eyes and enjoyed playing with the pipe cleaners too. I found it quite hard to judge where to put the finger holes and how big to make them part apart from that it was a very simple craft.

3. Building a den
After a particularly bad nights sleep due to teething, we were all tired and needed a low key indoor activity to keep us amused. Earlier in the week little J had been trying to use the clothes airer as a den so I figured why not give him chance to do it properly.  I took the clothes airer into the lounge along with plenty of cushions and sheets and we set up a den. I love this idea for making a den but for now the airer and sheets would do. I curled up with little J and read books for a while but it turned out he was still quite full of energy and soon wanted to get out and run around the house again. In the end hubby and I fell asleep in the den while little J headed to the kitchen and started making his own dinner!

4. Visiting the library
Little J has quite an impressive book collection and loves to read at every available opportunity. As a result he goes through phases where he gets bored of the same old books (not to mention how bored mummy and daddy get reading the same ones over and over again).  Luckily we live only 5 mins from the library so I've started taking little J for a visit every couple of weeks to read some new books and choose a couple to take home. It's a great way for him to regularly have new books in the house without me having to keep finding extra space for an ever growing collection. It's also a good way of teaching him about looking after things properly and how a library works.

5. Messy church
Last rainy weekend just happened to be Messy Church at a church near us.  A lot of churches seem to run these but we'd never been before. When we arrived there we several crafts set up around the room on the theme of Easter. We spent the first hour making chicks, decorating cookies, colouring pictures and planting a mini garden. When the crafts were done we all went into the main church area and sung some kids worship songs with actions and had a brief interactive talk about the meaning of Easter and Jesus being the best gift ever. After that we all had dinner together and got home just in time for pyjamas and bedtime. It was really good fun to go together as a family and also great to see little J interacting with kids of all ages and (mostly) having a great time (he got a bit frustrated that no one passed him the ball in football and couldn't understand that the other kids didn't know what his shouts of 'rah rah rah dah' meant, but other than that he loved it).

6. And finally....
Not entirely rainy day focused but still great for days when you're short of ideas - check out this great list of ideas for things to do every month of the year.