What to do with the kids on rainy days in the school hols - we need your ideas!

Some fantastic ideas - will definately try some more...kids had a fantastic day in the garden yesterday with the water pistols, they got soaked but it amused all 3 for 2 hours! I took some fab photos as I'm trying to do a book about things we're doing in the hols as we're not going away this year. Came across this site www.love2read.co.uk If you take lots of photos of things you do with your kids they won't forget and should impress teachers at the beginning of next term!

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DS and I made some painted peg people though he never did get around to putting the faces on his...

There are a couple of other threads too somewhere in other subjects and chat.

Would it be possible to put all 3 under a temporary heading like the Xmas one as this so good and I'm bound to loose it when it sinks to the bottom. If school holidays had it's own heading it would be great to find it quickly in a moment of desperation.

Pointy those of us who don't live in huge houses with huge gardens,little money, not much access to a car and several dc find these sort of threads very useful. I certainly do.

After a week of rain with 3 dc cooped up in a tiny house I'm pretty sure I will be beyond thinking up imaginative ideas on my own.

great ideas, sorry I haven't read all of this thread yet, but those of you with just the one DC - do you find you have to work harder at it, especially setting up playdates with friends? DS is 8 and I actually think he will miss being at school and the whole social side.

Ohhh get some huge boxes they will stay quiet for ages .

Feign a headache and send them to their Grans

Buy a load of wooden pegs and let them make peg dolls ,all they need is a felt tip to draw the faces and some material scraps for the clothes.

Bug hunts.

Tea partys in the garden.

Go to the diy store and nick take lots of wallpaper smaples and let them make a dolls house or a mosiac from the wallpaper.

Find pebbles or buy a packet for a pound and make paperweights them give them everyone for xmas . Mwahahahahaha.

Let them make a newspaper.

Cornflour mine love this but do it outside ... Get a pack of cornflour mix it with water so it's gloopy but not runny add green food colouring and watch them go great for slime at halloween too.

Library --They have loads on and they have dvd's for a pound.

Park.

Dogwalks and let them bath the dog.

Turn the TV off cos kids tv is rubbish repeats .

Have a disco.

Buy a bottle of cheap bubble bath and some cheap shaving foam and stick them in the bath for an hour (be warned the bathroom will look like an explosion at a boot's the chemist)

Stock up on craft stuff from the poundshop and let them do this.

Playdates.

If they argue make them hug each other --trust me they hate this.

Facepaints thats at least an hours entertanment.

A rainy spell is perfect socialing weather for us. When it's sunny I like to be free of social commitments so, we can head off to the park/drive to the beach etc if the mood takes us without much preparation.

If a week of cool, rainy weather is forecast, I phone round my ds's friends and arrange a few playdates.

IME if there is a guest child or two in the house, rainy day boredom is much less of an issue. My 8 year old usually has a fab time trashing the housemaking a den inside his bedroom with his guest. Things are a bit different with my 14 year old and his guest of course - they mainly play guitar or go on the xbox.

Even better is when one of the guests parents reciprocate and invite my son(s) back to their house. Visiting friends is my ds's ideal rainy day activity.

Lol I'll second CF - what's wrong with playing in the rain with your wellies on . Baking is always a good one.

Write things to do on bits of paper (eg play monopoly; Hama beads; tidy dressign table; make balloon-powered model car; do 200-pc jigsaw; anything else you can think of that you never do).

Then you pull one out of the hat and you have to do it.

play a game where you take it in turns to blind fold each other then pne person has to feed random things to the other, eg; square of jelly, piece of banana etc and the other has to guess what it is.

Sew clothes for dolls.

Get kids to make up dnace rountines and perform them for you.

Hide things, then find them a few days later - we have some foam dinosaur jigsaw puzzles, and my 2 (6 and 4) love to hide them around the house. If we leave it a couple of days they forget where they are so have enormous fun finding them.

yoga - really - ds is still abit manic for this but dd loves copying me. We also build obstacle courses from furniture/cushions

Making people out of catalogues - fatface/joe browns/other junk send through catalogues that show clothes without people in them - dd loves putting together outfits and drawing faces/feet onto them.

button box- maybe it's because they've inherited my anal retentivness but both of mine adore sorting through the 5 generation old button box

Agree with Pointy.

Loads of families seem to manage to spend lots of time together without going insane, spending a fortune or micro-managing.

Home ed families do it all the time.

lol pointy! I know what you mean but it's hard when you have one at full-time school and one or more not (roll on September I say)

My top tip is arrange for your dc friends to come and play, have lunch etc (and vice versa) for as many days of the week as possible.

Our local swimming pools have free sessions for children in teh hols.

There's LOADS for children to do. This is not a challenging problem

I find it hard to believe there are all these parents with school age children who find it 'challenging' to have them at home for 7 weeks.

How did they manage with pre schoolers, for heaven's sake.

1. Bake or cook something simple for tea
2. Play board games, organise a competition with friends
3. Get kids to organise a litter pick in their local park
4. Take part in local library reading scheme
5. Rent fun dvd and make popcorn

1. Tell them to stop moaning and find something to do

sheesh

If out at park or beach, encourage kids to collect bits and pieces, stones twigs, pebbles etc, then design/make a 'mouse/fairy house. If this is made in garden can take steps further by writing notes, drawing pictures etc to said creatures. If lucky said creatures may leave gifts behind. Needn't be expensive, 'magic invisible fairy dust' went down very well!!

Take out bath toys, make paperboats etc to float in puddles on rainy days

Buy cheap wetsuits from Tesco etc to ensure constant use of paddling pool whatever the weather.

If you have rackets and a soft ball:

Go to your local leisure centre and play some form of tennis on a squash court (if it's anything like our one they won't be booked up and you can get away with not paying!).

If you have rackets and a soft ball:

Go to your local leisure centre and play some form of tennis on a squash court (if it's anything like our one they won't be booked up and you can get away with not paying!).

We finish tomorrow for 8 and a half weeks (NI). I work in a school

I didn't know schools in Scotland had such long holidays. Is it really 8/9 weeks?

Anyway, dd and I have a book called 'Things to do with Mum' which has a number of ideas. Sorry have to go - will be beack hopefully

last week we went to an olde-fashioned traditional sweet shop and stocked up on sherbert fountains, toffee bon-bons, candy sticks, lemonade crystals, sherbert etc etc and came home and watched Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory

Not one for a regular occurence (as I was bouncing off the walls after the cola-bottles) but as a one off it was great fun.

make a rain stick.

You tube is great for whiling away an hour or so on a wet afternoon (under close supervision of course!)
My 2 boys have recently enjoyed The Muppets, the old Charly Says info films, a load of silly symphonies and a load of Pokeman characters dancing to Crazy Frog song....do a little research first as to which videos are suitable for a family audience IYKWIM"