Share your top rainy day summer activities for the chance to win a fabulous Little Tiger book bundle and Just For Tiny People teepee

[EmilyMumsnet]

Our delightful British Summers, whilst enjoyable, don't exactly guarantee a long stretch of sunny days. But in true British stiff-upper-lip spirit, we want you to share with us your best family games and activities to enjoy on a rainy summer day.

Little Tiger's fantastic selection of new books is all you need to enjoy a long holiday of great family reading, whether your little 'un is intrigued by the glowing green Poo In The Zoo or wants to know how to get No More Cuddles when it’s all a bit too much.

The best suggestion will win a bundle of five Little Tiger picture books and a Just For Tiny People Teepee (pictured) – a perfect package to enjoy inside or out. Whether it’s board games or den building, we want to hear what you get up to so we can help inspire fellow Mumsnetters for the next rainy day this summer holiday!

You can explore more fabulous books and stories to share at www.littletiger.co.uk and to discover magical hideaways for your own tiny people visit www.justfortinypeople.com - Mumsnetters can get 10% any order at JFTP when they quote Newbigperson10 at the checkout.

Prize Package:
One Magical Teepee from Just for Tiny People
Copies of:
Poo In The Zoo by Steve Smallman and Ada Grey
More! by Tracey Corderoy and Tim Warnes
No More Cuddles by Jane Chapman
Pirates in Pyjamas by Caroline Crowe and Tom Knight
Katie McGinty Wants A Pet by Jenna Harrington and Finn Simpson

This competition is sponsored by Little Tiger, and closes on Tuesday 1 September

My kids all love reading so a great rainy day activity is throwing a book party. Lots of activities to do apart from the initial reading, i.e. quizzes, drawing pictures from the books, making up your own ending for the stories . The possibilities are endless and kids are learning whilst havig fun on a rainy day :)

When we totally ran out of ideas, we do a Jillian Michaels exercise dvd together. By the time DS (who is 7) chooses the dvd, I make space in the lounge for 2 exercise mats, get all the weights and other gear he wants, it is nearly past his bedtime. Then we have a good laugh, a conversation about how it is killing us, water break every 2 minutes, a long bath and the day is gone, and we exerted ourselves as well.

If it;s raining and your little ones are bored, why not build an indoor tent, two chairs, a big blanket, over the tops, and inside another blanket, cushions and little plates of party food, ie mini hot dogs, carrots children love to play inside,

Depending on the age. Hide and seek or some indoor board games

We pitch the tent in the back garden and read books inside while drinking hot chocolate

We have a 'rainy days idea box'- one rainy day the kids decorated a box and spent an afternoon coming up with ideas to put in there and when it rains they pull out an idea. The deal is that I get one veto and then have to agree to the second option (so if it is not practical at that time for me to bake for example I can get them to pull another option).

Ideas in our box include baking, making bread, setting up a restaurant, arts and crafts, story writing, make a magazine, setting up a home cinema afternoon- ie drawing tickets, making snacks and setting up the lounge before watching a film, having a story, building a LEGO city, making a den, playing the memory game (lots of things on a tray under a tea towel, 60 seconds to remember as much as possible before its covered and you have to write as many as you can remember), the chocolate game (you need a few kids for this though- sit in a circle roll a dice, whoever gets a 6 goes to the plated up choc bar in the middle, puts on hat, scarf and gloves and cuts said chocolate with a knife and fork- they get to eat as much as they can this way before the next person rolls a 6!) and putting on wet weather gear to go out jumping in puddles.

I find the action of taking turns to pull out a suggestion makes it far more exciting than it would be if I suggested baking a cake or listening to a story.

I dress my boys in their waterproof trousers and jackets and wellies. We head out for the local forest and go for a walk. The rain doesn't keep us from getting out in to nature, we embraced the rain and splash in puddles!

Gloop is amazing, even dh got into this one and enjoyed it! Mix together cornflour and water in a bowl to a thick paste. If you press it quickly (eg rolling it quickly in a ball in your hands) it's a solid but as soon as you stop it turns into a liquid. Dd likes to play with a bowl of gloop with her farm animals enjoying going in it (and then finishes the game by washing them in a bowl or water and washing u liquid and then dries them).

My favourite rainy day activity is baking, although that most likely related to how much I love baking. Luckily the children do too.
Alternative activities are building a den, with free range of the chairs and blankets, a movie morning/afternoon, or if we need to get out, waterproofs wellies and a puddle hunt.
We did the latter a lot when they were pre schoolers. From bitter experience just check there are no holes in the wellies before you send them gleefully into a huge puddle.

Well, rain brings snails. So this is a perfect time to hold a Snail Racing Championship!

The day before you want to hold it (or a few hours before) call up as many friends as you can and get them to collect snails, put them in a suitable container and feed them and train them to the peek of their physical condition. You can leave it to their imagination as to how this is achieved - it is amusing how some kids' minds work :-).

In the meantime, you go and buy a small trophy/medals from you local trophy shop (mine is very cheap), or make some. Then get a large piece of wood or cardboard and make a track with concentric circles on it and then maybe another with a straight racing track on it. The idea is to select a couple of fun games. One can include putting all the slugs in the centre circle and the winning snail is the one to reach the outer concentric circle first. Or you can have a straight flat-out race or 'which snail can get the furthest in 5 minutes'.

Then on the day of the 'Snail Racing Championship', you can hold qualifying heats to build excitement for the 'finals', which can be interspersed with an indoor picnic (making sure everyone washes their hands!!!) It is hilarious and very competitive. You can help bring out the children's creative side by thinking of snail names, deciding how they are going to train their specimen and how they are going to lure them on the track. We found that putting small stickers on the backs of the snails with the owner's name is the easiest. Anyone knocked out of the heats has to be official cheerleaders. In our house, this has been the most hilarious part of all! The kids really loved receiving the trophies. Five years later, they are still in pride of place in our house.

A word of warning...make sure everyone takes their snails home, unless you want to find half of your garden missing the next day!

We are at the moment in Greece and suffering from heat and having to be indoors from 12.00 until 19.30 every day. So, what do we do?
Emma is good at playing imaginary games inspired by her Reading Rainbow or Hopster reading and video watching. Last week, she was obsessed with Hilltop Hospital and we made a nurse's bag by sticking a red cross she coloured in to one of her normal shoulder bags. Her dollies were patients and there was a lot of toilet roll wrapping around broken limbs, lol and plenty of stern talk, in a proper English accent :-).
Today, we managed to find a discounted ambulance tent in Mothercare, I can see another week full of medical adventure!xx

We do lots of fabric painting, normally old school uniform white polo shirts which are coming to the end of their life, the children love scribbling all over them or designing 'arty' creations!
We also do lots of cooking, and even better is cooking with vegies or soft fruit we have managed to pick off the allotment. In the evenings we are out looking for slugs and snails (on the allotment). We have snail races the next day (weather permitting!) and then let them go, but far away from the allotment!

As soon as we see rain we know we can do one of our favourite activities - we go on a snail hint. It might be just in the garden, or we might go for a walk along the lanes around our estate. Armed with our wellies and waterproofs we count the number of snails we see, are they big or small, what colour are their shells and we might also have a snail race. A bit of rain never stops us from having some outdoor fun!

Today (while it's dry) we collected some rocks from the garden, which we're going to wash and paint into 'rock pets' on a rainy day.

We can then play with them - also thinking of doing a few the same styles so that we can use them to play tic tac toe.

We play 'Guess Who' but for real ????

We choose a topic, so someone from a film, CBeebies, a family member (particularly funny results!) etc. and off we go.
We all disappear and find whatever we can in the way of clothes, make paper moustaches, wigs, or whatever we need. Then, we all come back together, and have to guess who each of us it supposed to be.

We literally have hours of fun, pinching things from each other's costumes for our next character and coming up with funny tips to make them easier to guess! The person who makes the most characters that everyone gets right is the winner (this usually takes until the rain stops!).

We bake biscuits and watch a film under a duvet and eat them!

We are keeping a scrapbook "What we did in the summer" and on rainy or quieter days we spend time sticking in photos, cinema tickets, drawings etc as mementoes of the fun we've had. My daughter spends a lot of time colouring it in and putting stickers on it to make it look pretty! As well as being a fun, creative thing to do I'm hoping it will be a nice reminder of the summer holidays.

The children like to put on a show, which can occupy them for between half an hour and a couple of hours, depending on how far you go with it. They could just choose, practise and perform songs for a quick activity or for a longer activity, make tickets and a programme and also choose/make Costumes before setting out chairs for the audience, setting up the stage, practising again and then performing.

I took my two youngest children to a junk modelling class today. We had lots of fun making a giant Peppa pig out of boxes, scrap materials etc. We also have a craft box at home where I save lots of bits and pieces so I can magically transform them at a moments notice (haha). Only trouble was Peppa is residing in the passenger seat of my car, so my husband nearly got stopped by the police as pig wasn't wearing a seatbelt.

We baked cakes and biscuits on the last rainy day we had. This time, I let the kids do as much as possible.
My eldest also helped me make a stew by chopping all the veg.
Other things have been making dens. My eldest wants to go on screens all the time if we are stuck inside. I will read this thread for inspiration!

We do lots of different activities, so it's difficult to say. I usually have something planned just in case it rains. We had fun yesterday with eggs. We looked at how they felt in their shells while raw. Then we boiled them and talked about how different they are. Then we sat on a blanket in the kitchen and shelled them together. Lunch sorted!
Today we're going to make some personalised torches with toilet tubes and the initial letter of our name taped to the end. Stick a little torch into it and project the letter onto the wall. Lots of opportunities to learn as we play.

Jigsaws, painting, baking, indoor picnics, movie marathons... :)

Lots of different things... Movie afternoon complete with popcorn, baking cakes and then visiting relatives or friends with our baking, having pretend afternoon tea or picnic or playing on the piano!

On those all too frequent rainy days imagination and creativity take centre stage with a delve into the dressing up box. We all choose an outfit and then play a game where we take it in turns to 'swap' and item, we do this 3 or 4 times and then see our 'transformations'.

I have a big cardboard box which we named 'Nana's funny box' filled with wigs, hats, moustaches, face paints, funny glasses, you name it it's in their ha. My grandsons love it and on rainy days out it comes and we all take turns to see who can dress up the funniest. Its takes away the boredom and turns a miserable rainy day into a giggly fun day!