Little to No Cost Rainy Day Children's Activities

Living in the Seattle area teaches you to do things while it's raining. This includes keeping your children busy and active when outdoor play is not available. Adding in today's economic issues and it's nice to have some activities with little to no cost. Here are six you can start with, having fun with your kids while letting their creative imaginations bloom.

- At Christmas time, our thoughts turn to tree ornaments. But many ornaments can also be used as light catchers or wall ornaments when Christmas has long passed. Creating home made ornaments can be fun for both the child and the adult and there are many ornaments you can create from recycled materials:

Cardboard boxes can be cut into stars, snowmen, or basic geometric shapes like triangles, squares and circles. These can then decorated with a variety of mediums: covered with aluminum foil; painted with finger paints; glued with buttons or Cheerios and then spray painted; glued and glittered. By cutting a variety of these up ahead of time, you can use this activity as a rainy day party idea for several children, each getting their own ornament to hang.

- Baking cookies can also be a great together activity. There are several kinds of cookies that lend themselves to child activities, including peanut butter cookies, jam thumb prints, oatmeal raison cookies and sugar cookies. These can be decorated with sprinkles; iced; filled with a variety of fillings (for the jam prints) and even painted (for the sugar cookies).

- How about creating a time capsule or a memory box? Any shoebox will do. First you decorate the box together and then you get to fill it. The kids should write a note or draw a picture to put in the box and then, for about a month, add little things you want to remember years from now. This can actually be the object itself, or a picture of the object. For instance, suppose the child has a new puppy or kitten for a pet. A picture of the animal can be added to the box. Set the box in a protected place and have the child decide on a long term date on which to open their memory box. Be sure to mark that date on both the box and your calendar so it will not be forgotten.

- String art is another activity that not only teaches older children about geometry but can create some pretty unique artwork. This requires a piece of wood or even an old window frame with small nails hammered around the wood in a geometric, often a square shape. How big the shape is will determine how big the artwork will be. Start by tying a string to one of the nails. Stretch the string across the "picture" and loop it around another nail. Keep crossing the picture and choosing different nails to make your artwork. This is even prettier when more than one color of string is used. When you get what you like, tie the string off on one of the nails.

- Rainy day sculptors is always fun and in "Self Made Play-dough Activities for (even Very Young) Children During the Christmas Holidays and Vacations", Mary-Jane Jones not only provides a great recipe for this, but also some ideas of what and how to sculpt with it.

- Last, but not least, how about catering to their musical talents? Gather several non-breakable items together like oatmeal containers, empty coffee canisters and some wooden spoons. With these items you can have a nice little percussion ensemble. You will be counting "One, Two, Three, And Four" out loud. Hand each child a wooden spoon and one of the items. Child #1 bangs the wooden spoon on the item every time you say "One". Child #2 bangs the wooden spoon on their item every time you say "Two" and "Three". Child #4 bangs the wooden spoon on their item every time you say "Four". Mix this up with each child taking turns at the different count. Mix up the counts and let them hear the difference. Don't forget glass music either. Older children can fill four glasses with water at different levels. Wet the finger and slide the finger around the rim. You should hear a musical note. You can do this separately or add this as another level to your ensemble group. Who knows? You might end up with a few little musical protégés!

The point of these activities is to show we don't need to spend a great deal of money in order to entertain our children. It is possible and sometimes preferable to just use what we have around the house and allow them to get creative with it.