Keeping children from being glued to the TV or computer games on rainy days can be a difficult task for parents. As a home school mom of ten children, creativity is a part of our everyday life, including on rainy days. Computer games are limited, so seeking fun and educational activities is a priority.

We have many games in our home for various ages. We watch GoodWill, garage sales and local store sales to keep a good supply on hand. Our game closet is filled with Uno, Monopoly, Bingo, Life, Candy Land, card games and many more of the "good ole games" we all grew up with. These games are great teaching games and keep their minds alert and also a good time to teach them to not be "sore losers".

An on going activity we have is a story we all add to in a notebook. Someone begins a story, writing down a few sentences. For our family we say to write as many sentences as they are old. Then when they are finished, they begin one more sentence, not finishing it, but for the next child to continue from. Young children that cannot write can recite what should be written. This story can be written just for that one day, or continue on for many months or even years, writing in the notebook again on one of those rainy or "I am bored" days. It is fun then to read it aloud at another time as a family (maybe making a New Years Eve tradition). Generally, the story gets quite goofy and does not make much sense, but the children have a wonderful time together creating the story, and their writing skills, spelling, punctuation etc. are all put to use!

Doing crafty things during rainy days is another way of keeping children busy and working with each other. For our youngest children, the crayons and coloring is a never ending project. Just doing a simple search on the internet, oodles of various themes can be found for children to color. Letters of the alphabet with corresponding primary pictures can be found for young children to color - not only having fun coloring but learning about letters and their sounds. If your child loves "Cinderella" or specific cartoon characters, these can also easily be found in a coloring format. All that is needed for this everyday activity is a printer, crayons and paper.

Making envelopes from old wallpaper books is another fun project that then can even be made to give away as a gift. Most wallpaper stores will give for free outdated wallpaper books. Take any sized envelope you wish to use and carefully pull

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