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The Rainy Day Project

There are hundreds of crafts one can do with the kids during days, like today, that are just hum-drum and filled with gray skies and rain. You just have to put your mind to it to look around the house for tools, materials, and ideas. Your children's own imagination will probably provide an essential boost towards the desired craft. Here I am only going to describe one fun project that can be done in many, many different ways.

The entire idea will depend upon your children's imagination and creativity. Do some brainstorming with the kids for half-an-hour or so to come up with some basic storylines for ideas. One of the ideas I used to have as a kid during these days was based on a 'King of the Mountain' idea. I, and my four brothers, often would take down blankets and pillows, tossing them around the floor, and play a game I like to call "The Floor is Lava". It's not a very ingenious name, but it tells the rules pretty well. The floor is lava, so therefore you must never touch the floor. If you touch the floor you are out of the game until only one person is left.

In relation to that game or similar ideas, what you would do is do a little treasure/scavenger hunt to find materials that can be used. Just make a pile somewhere in the living room (don't worry, the materials can be moved later). After you find all this great material, have the kids draw up some pictures, design some costumes, and create a landscape that will fit their project/game. Moving furniture, although a headache at times, can easily quiet down the "I'm bored"s of your children.

Once you have the costumes made and the landscape created, you can go one step further by getting a pair of dice and some cardboard for the next phase. With the cardboard you can either write down something goofy to do, like tap your head and rub your belly at the same time, or write down some questions, or whatnot, and place these around the room. Use the dice to have the kids move, if they end up at the same place, they can do something odd like perhaps have a staring contest or a funny face contest to determine who will be in front and maybe move to the next position. At each different location you can have a prize that the kids don't know about hidden and only available once they complete a 'quest', which could be something simple like saying the ABC's backwards to even cleaning a room for a bigger prize.

As you can see from this example, you can do so many different things to enjoy time with your children during rainy days and not worry about hearing "There's nothing to do" and feeling the need to say "Do you want me to find you something to do?" We all know we dislike saying that... it's much easier to just have fun and take some time to bond with your kids.

Learn more about this author, JJ Whitehead.
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