Winter-time blues... gone

By Jessica Ensing Winter is the season of shorter days, but if you’re stuck indoors with bored kids the days can start to seem much longer! With outdoors out of the question many days due to cold and rain, it can be hard to find suitable indoor substitutions for things that would usually happen on the deck or on the lawn or at a playground. Here’s some of our favourite inside activities to keep the fun going all year long! MESS FREE PAINTING

Painting is an outdoor activity in our house. Somehow the paint always seems to end up everywhere, and on everything my children touch for hours afterwards. To recreate some of the joy of painting whilst still protecting our carpet during winter, we’ve turned to ziploc bags (you could probably use an old Kai Carrier designated for the purpose for a more eco friendly alternative). There are a few different ways to do it - you can put the paint (or paints) in a dollop on a piece of paper and slide that into the bag, you can put paint straight into the bag for them to push around and draw in, or (the favourite in our house at the moment) you can put two colours of paint in and let them mix them together. The key thing is to make sure you seal the bag before giving it to your child! If your little one is particularly adventurous or likely to try to open the bag you can duct tape it to a board or table top so at least you’ll hear a warning right before it gets opened up. And beware of your child trying to use pens or other potentially sharp objects on the bags as this can cause leaks!

It can be harder to ensure your energiser bunnies get enough movement to burn off all those wiggles in the winter months. But instead of staring longingly at the trampoline as it gets pelted with rain, why not set up some jumping activities inside? If bouncing on the bed or diving onto the clean washing pile doesn’t fly in your household, there’s still plenty of ways to get those little ones leaping! Try setting up an obstacle course of boxes to jump over, or cutting shapes out of cardboard or fabric for your kids to jump onto (this can be a fun way to practice shape recognition). Another classic way to get more jumping into your day is to use masking tape or chalk to mark out an obstacle course of sorts on the floor - you can do hopscotch, or make zigzags and spirals to bounce around, or any number of things. WATER PLAY

Probably the truest parenting adage is this - if they’re crabby, put them in water! The pools can be a good option during winter, especially as under fives are free, as is one supervising adult for up to two under five year olds (thanks Palmerston North City Council!). But if, like me, you’d prefer to have water play in the comfort of your own space, there’s still plenty of ways to bring renewed excitement to taking a dip. Baths are awesome for water play, but if you don’t have one a flexitub put in the shower will often do a good job too! My two tend to get on each other’s nerves sharing a bath so we’ve also just put two flexitubs in the bathtub so they each had their own space. Bubble bath is always a winner for adding some extra fun to bath time. If you’re feeling extra inspired, a squirt of dishwashing liquid, a little bit of water, and some food colouring can be beaten with an electric hand mixer to create awesome coloured foam that will sit on top of the water. Bath bombs, either homemade or store bought, are another fun way to extend water play. A favourite water activity in our house is where you add black food colouring to the water until murky (it takes surprisingly little!) and then you put small toys that will sink into the bath and the kids get to grope around in the dark water trying to find everything. It’s the world’s wettest treasure hunt! As you can see there’s plenty of ways to have fun indoors over winter. And if all else fails and you can’t stand being inside any longer...chuck on your raincoat and head out to splash in some puddles!