Indoor Activities for Hot or Rainy Days

Create Your Own Indoor Water Park

If you can’t go outdoors, hit a local pool, or play on a Slip 'N' Slide, the next best thing is to create your own water party indoors. Dress your kiddos in swim diapers or bathing suits you don’t mind staining, and spread a large tarp or several garbage bags taped together across the floor in your living room or kitchen. Plop your plastic baby pool or baby bathtub on top. Move any electronics or books out of the room, as there will be splashing, and fill your baby pool with water, Jello, slime, spray foam, or bubbles. Bring out the water toys, sensory table, water wheels, ramps, mini pails, buckets, and cups so you can do some pouring. You might even consider coloring your water with all-natural food-grade dye so you can teach your kiddo colors as well.

Convert Your Bathtub Into a Rainy Day

Whether it’s steaming hot outdoors or raining, your bathtub is a magical place to create a rainy environment. Dress your little one up in a yellow rain slicker and rain boots. Then, give them a mini umbrella and show her how she can shield herself from the "rain" (a.k.a. your showerhead). Then, put the stopper in and let her splash puddles in your bathtub. Bring little toy vehicles into the bath and pretend it’s a rainy day in London or Seattle, complete with rainy day music from Spotify (try "Walking in the Rain'" by The Ronettes). Ask your little one what the different kinds of rain are, from sprinkles of rain to a downpour. For older kiddos, play a YouTube video about how rain forms to teach them about the biological process.

Create a Weather Diorama

Whether your little ones long for a sunny day in the park riding the merry-go-round, a snowy winter holiday in the mountains, a rainy day at the pond with the ducks, or just want to learn about a cool phenomenon (like a tsunami or a tornado), you can help them visualize it by making a diorama. (Some weather phenomena could be intimidating for younger ones, so help curate their choice of weather.) You’ll need a cardboard box, scissors, floss or thread, craft glue, clear tape, miniature figurines, a pencil or pen to draw with, and paper. Sketch out your weather scene according to your research, and create your box using these instructions.

Make a Mini Museum

Does your little one have a favorite museum that you can’t visit right now? Recreate that museum at home, whether it’s the butterfly exhibit at the natural history museum or the Van Gogh exhibit at the art museum. By printing out art or using figurines, you can create an exhibit that your kiddo can show off to some friends later. Decorate each room with a different theme or put red string up with popsicle sticks to rope off an exhibit. Write or print out placards to describe each exhibit or painting, just like a museum would!

Go Camping

You don’t have to head out into the great outdoors to enjoy s’mores, hot dogs, and campfire songs! If you don’t have a tent or teepee, hang a sheet against the wall or tuck it over the edge of a sofa. If you have a fireplace, roast s’mores and hot dogs, or wrap up potatoes in foil and cook them — or if it’s too hot, just create a pretend fireplace by hanging up your kid’s drawing on the wall. Cue up a country album, pull out the ukulele, or strum a guitar. Finally, you can sleep in the tent together and do an astronomy lesson at night, watching a video or coloring constellation drawings together.

Get Crafty in the Kitchen

Order some new cookie cutters, pastry bags, and icing — here’s how you can make this kitchen escapade much more exciting than a normal day of cooking. You can be healthy with low-sugar, fruit juice-sweetened options, or go nuts with colored sugars and decorations, but opt for designs and patterns that please your tots and keep them busy decorating. Set up a kids’ table with all the decorations you’ve sourced from a baking shop and tape a printout of the desired outcome (or just plop down an iPad or your phone). Then, the kids can match what they see or get wildly creative with their own designs.

Create Bubbletopia

Every kid loves bubbles, but you’re about to create the ultimate bubbletopia — and teach geometry and science lessons while you’re at it!! First off, you’re going to need to order some gear, including a huge bubble wand, miniature bubble wands kids can hold, a bubble machine, and a bubble lawn mower. Create a station where your kids can make floating soap bubbles. Throw on "Pop the Bubbles" for the little ones and SpongeBob’s "Bubble Song" for the slightly older kids. Next, it’s time to unleash all the bubbles! Direct your child to turn on one machine after another as you create huge bubbles with the massive wand and sing along to the songs. Count the bubbles as you pop them together, and aim to pop 10, 50, or 100 bubbles. Teach your kiddos what spheres and circles are and have them draw the shapes (with a compass or by hand). You can also explain that bubbles are gassy, which should make the children laugh.

Do a Water Cycle Experiment

Stuck inside with cartoons and no homework? You can teach your kids about evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and flow with this simple experiment. All you’ll need is a plastic Ziploc bag, a permanent marker, blue food coloring, clear tape, and water. By the end, your kiddo will know why it rains and how clouds are formed, and have learned a lesson about evaporation and condensation.

Invent a Rube-Goldberg Machine

You know those chain reaction videos that the band OK Go makes? Yes, the ones where a set of dominoes sends a ball down a ramp, which results in a series of hilarious and incredible chain reactions, concluding in colorful paint being shot on the band members’ faces. Turns out, it’s not that hard to make a simple Rube-Goldberg at home. Start with basic ramps, balls, strings, tubes, and dominos. Your kiddo will marvel at acceleration, kinetic and potential energy, gravity, momentum, velocity, and other physics concepts in no time!

Get Them Moving with a Scavenger Hunt or Obstacle Course

If you have enough room, getting your kids moving is optimal so they’re tired out by bedtime or naptime. An obstacle course sounds complicated, but it’s actually not that hard. From limbo under a string attached to two chairs or tables, to crawling army-style under a series of obstacles, or getting across the living room without touching the "lava" on the floor, there’s a lot you can do. Have your little ones balance soft stuff (like pillows and beanbags) on their heads as they run, or use hula hoops and jump ropes that they have to go through, under or above. For a scavenger hunt, make a list of things they can find around the house, from five rolls of toilet paper or a potted plant, to something red and rectangular. Whoever brings more back gets more points, but all the children can receive a tiered reward, such as a new book or two! Make sure to use secret clues — and you can even make it themed, with elements of pirates and sailors, to up the fun quotient.

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