The wet cold winters in Paarl might give your children cabin fever, but don?t worry. Here are quite a few ideas to keep the kids entertained this winter without having to resort to watching TV or play Xbox or Playstation games.
Have an Indoor Picnic
Picnics are not just for summer. Throw a blanket and cushions on your living room floor and let the children help make healthy snacks to have at their picnic. Use cookie cutters to make fun shaped sandwiches, make popcorn and flavour it with spices, powdered cheese or icing sugar for a sweet treat, make your own lemonade for some vitamin packed goodness to keep away colds and flu, make mini fruit kebabs by piercing small block of fruit onto toothpicks, grate cheese and roll it into balls mixed with their favourite chips crushed finely and round it off with a mug of steaming hot chocolate with marshmallows.
Indoor Gardening
Many herbs and flowers grow very well indoors. Use recycled containers like plastic yoghurt tubs and let the children decorate it with paint, stickers or magazine cut outs. Make sure to make a few holes in the bottom for water drainage. Go to your closest plant nursery and let your children choose a few herb or flower seedlings. Get potting soil that has already got compost in it. When you get home, you can let the children plant their seedlings into the decorated containers. Place the planted seedlings each on a saucer and give your child the duty of watering their plants every morning. You can even use see through plastic containers and plant seeds in it, so that your child can watch the little plant grow. Place the plants in the window sill to get well needed sun to grow.
Kitchen Fun
Take out your recipe books and let your child help you bake one of the family?s favourite cookie recipes. For smaller children you can use a recipe that does not require baking. Let them help stirring, sifting, pressing out cookies or decorating. You can also make a batch of cupcakes and let the children have free reign with the decorating of the cupcakes. Making play dough is also great fun! Mix 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt and a few drops of food colouring together. Add 1 cup of water and 1 tablespoon of oil and mix it together till it forms a ball. Kneed for a while and voila, you?ve got child-safe play dough in a jiffy.
Scrap Booking
Scrap booking is a fun way to keep children busy for hours. Use some old magazines to cut out words and letters from or a few family photos and a selection of paints and stickers and decorations. You can also create unique family tree by using photos of all your family members and drawing a tree on an A2 size poster board. Let the children decorate the tree with each family member?s favourite activities.
Games
Playing board games are always fun. You can even play in teams. Create some healthy competition and let the winners choose an activity the losers must do, like wash the dishes after dinner. Make turns choosing games, so that everyone gets a chance to beat the others at what they excel in best. If you don?t have a variety of board games, why not create your own games or draw up a snakes and ladders board. There is also a wide range of imagination and word games that you can play. Charades are always great fun for the whole family. Don?t forget your trusty pack of playing cards!
Fort Fun / Camping in living room
Children have always enjoyed making forts out of furniture, blankets, and cushions. Help your kids construct their own fort in the family room. They?ll stay busy all day long with fun, quiet activities to play inside their new imaginary castle. The older children can even read stories to the little ones. If you have a children?s tent and you don?t want to have your furniture turned upside down, pitch the tent in the living room and have an indoor camping day.
Treasure Hunt
Put on your explorers hat and go hunting for treasures. Each child can hide an item somewhere in your house and then draw a map or write clues of how to get to the treasure. If it is not a rainy day, the treasures can also be hidden in the garden. Let all the neighbouring children join in and let everyone take turns to hide a surprise treasure or let everyone hide something at their house and make one big treasure hunt!
?Have a Backyard Bonfire
As South Africans we love our braai, but it is not so great during the cold winter months. Fire still adds warmth, so why not still make a fire outside when it?s not raining and let the children dress warmly and gather round the fire outside and toast marshmallows and make yummy Smores. (A?s?more?(sometimes spelled?smore) is a traditional night time?campfire?treat?popular in the?United States?and?Canada?consisting of a roasted?marshmallow?and a layer of?chocolate sandwiched between two pieces of?cracker) Toast a marshmallow and sandwich it between your favourite cookies. If it?s too cold to make a fire outside, start up your fireplace. You can also easily make Smores in your microwave by placing a marshmallow on a cookie; add a small block of chocolate, and cook ?it for a few seconds in the microwave till the marshmallow puffs up. Top it with another cookie and enjoy with your favourite steaming hot beverage.
Remember not to leave the little ones on their own at the fire!
Make a Natural Mobile
Your back garden is a treasure trove of beautiful ornaments that you can use to make a stunning mobile or wind chime with. Let your children gather small stones, acorns, dried seed pods, leaves, small sticks, empty snail shells etc. Wrap a piece of string or ribbon around each item. Take a stick at least 30cm long and knot the loose end of the ribbon to the stick. Tie a long piece of ribbon to the middle of your stick and hang it up in a tree or from your porch. You can also use an old clothes hanger to hang your ornaments from.
Make a calendar
Making personalised calendars could be so much fun and there are so many ways that you can decorate them. Turn it into an arts and crafts activity and let your children draw or decorate a picture for every month of the year. You can also use family photographs and make collages. Why not take your digital camera and play dress up, make funny faces or create themed scenes for each month. Remember to highlight special events of your family, like birthdays, on the calendar too! Calendars also make creates gifts, so you can scan in the final art works and print out a few calendars as gifts. Granny would love to see her beautiful grandchildren?s beaming faces all year round!
Paper Bag Puppets
Sock puppets are fun to make, but what is even easier to make are paper bag puppets. Take a small paper bag and crayons or markers. ?Simply draw a funny face on the bag and you have a puppet! ?You can also decorate your puppets with wool for hair, buttons for eyes, and glitter for cheeks. Ribbon can be added to the hair or made into a bow tie for the ?neck?. Draw on eyelashes and lips with colourful markers. Animal puppets are also great fun. The children can then create a puppet show and ?perform? it for you.
Make a Movie
Modern technology has made it so easy for anyone to make their own movies. Let your child have free reign with shooting some footage. Let them document the activities of your family pet or let them ?follow their feet? for a day or let them interview friends or neighbours. When they are done, help them edit it and add fun captions or music. Screen your child?s movie at your next movie night.
Make a Snow Globe
It is so easy to make your own snow globe. Take a glass jar and paste a plastic figurine on the inside of the lid. Let the glue dry completely. Fill the jar with water, glitter and liquid glycerine (available at a pharmacy). Tightly screw on the lid, making sure there is no leakage. Flip it over and let them see the beauty of their own winter wonderland.
Snowflake Silhouettes
Decorate your windows with snowflake silhouettes. Take white pieces of paper and fold it over a few times. Use scissors to cut out organic shapes. Unfold your paper to reveal a one of a kind snowflake. Paste it on the inside of your windows with small pieces of Prestick. If you want more intricate designs, you can use a template downloaded from the internet.
Indoor Sandbox
Take the biggest container you can find and fill it with rice, dry pasta or beans. Place it on the floor with newspaper underneath the container. Take out the children?s beach buckets and spades and let them play in the ?sandbox?. You can even paint a few shapes different colours and let the kids have a competition to see who can collect the most coloured shapes.
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