It can be a challenge to keep your children entertained during the busy winter season, when it’s too cold, or they might be too sick, to go outside and play in the snow, or when your children have grown bored of their usual books, games and movies. The following are some of the activities that I used to keep my children occupied to help me survive during winter:
Dress Up and Play
For years I kept an old trunk filled with discarded dress clothes and accessories. My children would play “dress up” and spent hours creating their own stories using these discarded props. They would practice and put on their efforts as plays for us. This activity encourages team work and imagination, and this remains one of their favorite childhood memories.
Ornaments and Crafts
Drag out your glue, acrylics, construction paper, glitter, scissors and cookie cutters. Enlist your children into making handmade ornaments for your tree. Even if Christmas has already come and gone, you can have your children make decorations that you will store to use the next year. I once found a recipe online for unsweetened cookie dough, cut it into desired shapes, baked it and let it cool. I then sanded lightly and let our children decorate with paint, markers, ribbon and glitter. We still hang these homemade ornaments on our tree, years later. Keeping crafts handy for your children to experiment with during the winter encourages their creativity and eye-hand coordination. In addition to Christmas decorations, my children would make other “works of art” that I would display throughout our home to brighten dark corners.
Cooking
I find that I spend more time cooking in the winter, and not just for the holidays. In my house cooking was a family experience, and even small children can help with washing, stirring or sorting while older children can usually handle chopping. It’s important to do activities together as a family, and my children were always more likely to try a new vegetable or dish if they had helped, even in a small way, to prepare it.
Read and Tell Stories Together
When my children were younger, they often enjoyed it when I would read them a story, usually just before bedtime. As they grew older they still liked it when I read to them, and I slowly enlisted my children’s help in reading different parts of a story. We would also take turns telling stories that we made up, usually involving their pets or favorite stuffed animals as characters. One of us would start the story and then we would go around taking turns making it up as we went along. This is another activity that encourages creativity and imagination and it was completely free except for time.