rainy day stuff to do with 11yr old, 8 yr old and 1yr old???

[deaconblue]

Am looking after niece and nephew for the day and night and had planned lots of outdoor stuff to do with them and ds (1) but it's going to be bloody rainy. So ideas so far are:
making play doh which they can then help ds play with
baking a cake (while he sits in high chair and watches)
bit crap, everything I can think of that they might enjoy involves poor old ds sitting in high chair or pram out of the way.

What does DS enjoy? Maybe they would feel grown up and helpful doing his activities with him? What sort of 1 is DS - 12 months or 20 months? Could you get out drawing stuff? Or get them to draw round his hands and then cut them out and he could draw on them, and then make a collage from them?

How about taking them all swimming? It would kill quite alot of time and tire them all out.

We're all off swimming Tuesday, but good idea. Ds is 13 months and hasn't ever done any crafty stuff really so I think he'd be intrigued. Hand shapes sound like an excellent idea. Nephew is really short of attention span too, so I plan to have lots of different short activities at hand.

get the wellies on and go out and splash in the puddles, back in for hot chocolate and marshmallows.

have you got any of those bendy straws? use the handprints - cut them out, roll the fingers to look like petals and then stick two hands to the bendy end of the straw - can make a bunch of flowers

got any paint? - feet, hand prints, potato prints etc

Have bought ingredients for play doh today and paper, chunky crayons etc to do hand prints. Found some great chunky hand held paint things too. I like the idea of the hand flower petals too.

how did your day go?

Thank you for asking. They are coming on Wednesday so am getting prepared
Really looking forward to it now that I've got ideas of stuff to do.