- Snow day, while lots of fun for outdoor activities, can be a bore if your children are stuck inside.
- Creating an indoor beach day, having a sock-ball fight, participating in the balloon olympics, recreating a campout indoors, and making paper crafts can all help to alleviate some of those indoor blues.
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Recently there has been a lot of snow falling, covering even the southern states. While outdoor snow day activities are generally enjoyed by all, sometimes when it snows you are just stuck inside. Whether it is too cold to go out for long; the snow is mostly ice; or your children are just tired of having to put on 15 layers of clothes to walk out the front door, sometimes you just need some indoor snow day activity ideas. Below are some of my family’s favorite indoor activities to keep them entertained on those cold, snowy days.
1. Build an Indoor Beach
This is an indoor activity that I have done multiple times with my children over the years including during the early months of covid. We work together to make a “beach” in our living room, using a tan colored sheet for the sand and a blue gymnastics mat for the ocean. Of course, you can use towels, sheets, mats, blankets, or whatever you have that looks similar to the colors of the beach to make this setup. Then I place their beach towels down on the sand. We also like to add little extra details like a large umbrella for ‘shade’ or turn on a sound machine with waves or ocean sounds.
For activities, I let them “build” a sandcastle by drawing one on a large whiteboard. Each one can add things to the sandcastle, such as shells, stars, flags, or other decorative items, with different colored dry-erase markers. An alternative to drawing a sandcastle would be to make one with playdough or building blocks. I also like to let them play with kinetic sand, keeping the mess contained on the “sand”-y sheet. If you have enough kinetic sand, you could always let them build a small sandcastle with that.
We like to complete the indoor beach day with homemade lemonade (little umbrellas optional), finger foods such as sandwiches, cut-up fruit like watermelon and strawberries, and veggies. We like to eat on the “beach” while watching some summer themed movie or tv show. This ensures that the beach-y fun lasts at least a couple of hours and alleviates a bit of that “I’m bored” mentality of our indoor snow day.
2. Indoor Snowball Fight
Want to bring that snowball fight feeling indoors but don’t want snow inside your house or your furniture broken? Look no further than a sock-ball fight. That’s right, just ball up each kid’s socks, either individually or as a pair, and let them have at it. For a more realistic snowball, use only white socks, or color-code for each child.
If you want to enhance the experience, give your children the option and time to make forts with cushions, sheets, and blankets to offer protection for themselves. For a larger household, you can let the kids choose teams and have the sock-balls color-coded for each team. Select safe zones or set time limits for each round. Really, you can make the game as simple or as elaborate as you want. And trust me, this will keep the kids busy for a while, especially if they are creating forts and using strategies.
If your kids are competitive, let them make a game out of it and keep score. Make rules where if you get hit 5 times (or whatever you guys decide) then you are out, and the last person left standing is the winner or team with the most hits (on the opposing team) in a set amount of time is the winner. You can set up the game however you would like or let your kids come up with their own set of rules.
3. Balloon Olympics
This is one idea that you can do so much with, even stretching it out over several days. There are many different ways that you can go about setting up your indoor Olympics. One way, and my personal favorite, is with a balloon. Another way, and my son’s favorite, is with sport related video games.
For the balloon Olympics, first decide which sports you want to include in your game lineup. These can include actual Olympic games such as javelin (tossing), soccer (kicking), tennis, track and field, baseball/softball, golf, cricket, and/or volleyball. Or you can come up with your own games such as a keep-off-the-floor toss, floor is lava (while carrying the balloon), or hacky sack balloon. Of course, for any sport in which you are supposed to hit the ball, like baseball, tennis, and golf, your kids can use their hand, a stick, or a plastic/foam version of the actual bat/racket/club. Once you have a lineup, decide how points will be awarded. If you have a long list of sports to play, you can choose to split the games up over two to three days. Let each of your children (and yourself if you want to join in the fun) have a turn at each of the sporting events and award points however they were predetermined. After all of the games are finished announce the winner!
The video game Olympics are a little more straightforward as the points will be taken care of by the game itself. However, you will be limited by the amount of games that you have on hand. I have found that Nintendo games that include multiple sports are a great fit for this. Let each player take a turn at each sport and keep track of the points. Whoever has the most points at the end of all of the games is the winner! Keep in mind that some of these games may be very quick and you may decide to either keep the best out of 3 games for each player or let each player play each game multiple times and use their combined score.
If you want, you can go the extra mile and print up a certificate for the winner and/or certificates for everyone who participated. You can even do 2nd, and 3rd place winners as well.
4. Indoor Camping
Indoor camping is one of our favorites! My kids received small child-size tents and sleeping bags as gifts one year. That is what prompted us to have our first indoor camping experience. I wasn’t confident with having three young children sleeping in separate tents outside, especially since I am not a bug person, and neither are my children. Therefore, I knew that indoor camping was for us. However, I still wanted to provide them with a camping experience as close as possible to a real camping trip, like the ones I had taken as a child.
For our adventure, I set up their tents in a semicircle in the living room. If you do not have a tent, or the room to put a tent, you can build a sheet fort with cushions, pillows, and sheets to emulate a tent or a cave. I even added their small outdoor folding chairs next to their tents. In the center I put some rocks in a circle to simulate a fire pit. A small heater would be cute for a heat source to sit near. I made them some smores (in the microwave) and we had some hot chocolate as we told stories around the ”fire”.
To keep the offline feel, I added toys to their tents for them to play with. They played some individually in their own tents but then played some board games together. Once it was nearing bedtime, we laid out their sleeping bags inside of their tents and got into some cozy pajamas. In lieu of sleeping bags, a comfortable pallet made of sheets, blankets, and pillows could be used. I ended up bunking with my youngest as his tent was actually pretty big and comfortably fit both him and I. Granted I, and my back, would have preferred to sleep in my own bed, I wanted them to have as near to an authentic camping experience as possible and that included me sticking around. No matter how your indoor camping adventure goes, you can bet your kids will have a good time.
5. Paper Snowflakes
This is a simple one but a classic. I provided my children with a stack of paper and let them fold then cut out multiple snowflakes. If you do not know how to cut out snowflakes, or you just want some variety in the shapes, here is playlist of 40+ paper snowflake designs.You can then string them together to make a cute banner to decorate with.
For something a little different, let your children cut out snowflakes from construction paper or colored cardstock. This will give you multicolored banners for a more festive look. If you want to add some sparkle to the snowflakes, have your child spread glue over the cutout snowflake and sprinkle it with glitter. You can also change it up by making a snow-mobile or a snowy windsock instead. For the snow-mobile you can use a sturdy paper plate as the top and hang the snowflakes at different lengths off the bottom with string or yarn. Rolling up a piece of paper or construction paper and taping it in a loose ‘roll’ shape will give you the windsock shape. Snowflakes can be glued to this for decoration or hung with string from the bottom.
I hope this blog helps make those snow days a little more fun. If you found this blog helpful please consider subscribing and liking this post as it will help to grow the community as well as let me know which type of posts are more beneficial for you. If you are looking for additional resources to help support your curriculum, check out my My Top 5: Online Resources for Each Subject blog.
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Do you and your family have some favorite indoor snow day activities? Please share your tried-and-true favorites with the community in the comments below.