Ideas for Winter Fun Indoors with Your Toddler

Winter days can seem long when you're cooped up inside with active young children. Watching a movie can entertain children for a few hours, but you might not be able to stand the fourth viewing of your child's new favorite DVD in a row. As long as you don't mind a little bit of a mess, here are a few TV-free ways to beat winter boredom without going crazy.

A water table costs about $25 at any major retailer in the summer, but it's great for winter play as well. If you get home from work too late at night to play outside, or the forecast includes sub-zero temperatures and strong winds, you might want to bring the snow inside. Fill up a water table with snow and put it on a screened-in porch. If you don't have a water table, any storage tote or large bucket will do. You could even fill up a kitchen or mud room sink with snow for your child to dig in. Sand box toys like pails and shovels are great to play with, but you can use any measuring cups or serving spoons you can find in your kitchen.

Once you're done with the measuring cups in the snow, wash them off and bake up a batch of cookies. Smaller children can pour ingredients that you measure into the mixing bowl, and bigger children can help stir. Prepackaged cookies that you break and bake or pouches of dry cookie mix also offer your child a chance to bake. Combine baking with counting - the numbers on the measuring cups and spoons or of how many cookies can fit on the baking sheet - for a fun and yummy way to introduce numbers and math skills.

To work off the calories from the cookies and to ensure a good nap, build a fort or obstacle course. Throw a blanket over a table or two chairs facing each other a few feet apart and hide out. Or have your child arrange a series of age-appropriate obstacles that match their dexterity level. For example, you can have your child run between two chairs, hop over a couch pillow and around a tower of blocks to the finish line at the couch.

For the artistic child, arts and crafts are a simple and fun activity. The best part is that you don't need a specific craft idea. Simply provide construction paper, child safety scissors, tape, crayons, glue sticks and cotton balls, and let your child's imagination take over. To protect your table and make clean-up easy, put paper on a new, clean boot tray or a plastic placemat. You can also sneak in practice with colors while your child works on small muscle skills.

While you have the craft materials out, you can help your child write and illustrate his or her own original story. Variations on this idea are to have your child write a story describing the action in a series of coloring book pages or write a new story to accompany the pictures in his or her favorite book. Either way, your child will enjoy writing and illustrating his or her own book.