
5 Entertaining and Educational Rainy-Day Activities for Kids
What do you do when bad weather has your family cooped up indoors? Don’t worry, there are plenty of ways to keep your kids entertained and educate them at the same time! The internet is full of handy resources, from children’s exercise videos to online music lessons, that can provide endless ideas for indoor fun. Here are some great activities to keep kids (and yourself!) entertained when the stormy weather strikes.
Get Dancing
Kids love to dance. So, what’s better than encouraging them to get some physical activity by dancing to music videos in the living room? Play their favorite songs and let them go wild, or hop on YouTube and pull up some videos that teach children popular dance moves. You can even find plenty of children’s exercise videos online that your kids can follow along with. Alternatively, children’s yoga videos are a great way to calm them down.
Bring Out the Little Musician in Them
Thanks to the internet, you no longer have to enroll your child in expensive music lessons when they want to learn an instrument. There are tutorials on YouTube that can teach you to play almost any song on any instrument. You can also look up fun children’s games that can teach kids the fundamentals of music theory and help them learn to read sheet music. There are even programs available to help with ear training so your kids can learn to pick out the notes in a song and sing in tune.
Encourage Their Creativity
Drawing and painting are wonderful pastimes for kids that provide more mental benefits than you may think. According to The Artful Parent, art contributes to fine motor development and helps kids enhance their problem-solving skills. It’s also a valuable way for kids to process the world around them and express their feelings. There are many videos and free online art classes that can teach kids the basics of perspective, shading, and color mixing. These can help give kids greater confidence to continue their love for art as they grow older.
Practice Maths with Real-Life Applications
Parents are always looking for ways to help supplement the education their children are receiving in school. Practicing maths at home by applying concepts to real-life situations is a great way to do this. This can help children discover the importance and usefulness of maths in their lives. For example, Imagine Learning recommends taking your kid to the grocery store and encouraging them to estimate the total cost of all your groceries before you reach the checkout.
You can also use a rainy day as an excuse to get your kids in the kitchen. While baking with your kids, teach them the maths involved in measuring, multiplying or dividing recipes to produce more or less food, converting measurements, understanding ratios, and calculating cooking times. You can also find online games that focus on the real-world applications of mathematics.
Break Out the Science Experiments
Being stuck inside is also a great opportunity to turn your kitchen into a science lab. Learning science through hands-on experiments encourages kids to be curious and to test their hypotheses about the world. For example, you can try making a glass of lava that resembles an old-school lava-lamp with just a few items you probably already have in your kitchen. This can teach your kids about the interactions between common household objects.
The next time it rains, be prepared with various activities to keep your kids from getting restless. Take advantage of rainy days to educate your kids while providing hours of entertainment. This is also a great way to bond with your family and have some fun yourself!
(Our thanks to Jenny Wise http://specialhomeeducator.com/ for this great article!)