Rainy days and Mondays

The following post is by editor Kara Fleck.

I don’t know what this time of year has looked like so far in your neck of the woods, but where we live Spring has been teasing us.  One week we’ll have gorgeous, sunny, blue skies with warm temperatures and the next week the skies will open up and pour freezing rain down upon us for three days straight.

This week is one of those cold, rainy, and gray ones so I’m digging up some of my best ideas for rainy days and Mondays – determined that they will not get us down!

I’m rounding up good ideas for indoor play and busting boredom on these rainy days and pinning them on my Rainy Days and Mondays Pinterest board.

Here are a few of our kid-tested favorites:

Ideas for rainy days and Mondays

• Newspaper Acting ::: A Magical Childhood (just grab a newspaper and dive right in)
• Paper Cities ::: Made by Joel (free printables with a variety of themes)
• Secret Messages ::: Education.com (use pictures for younger kids, written messages for older, you could even try codes for an added element of fun)
• Paint Chip Mosaics ::: Chica and Jo (don’t stop at paint chips – what else could you recycle into mosaic art?)
• Story Stones ::: Fairy Dust Teaching (both the creating and the playing with the stones is fun)
• Toilet Paper Tube Marble Run ::: Two Chicks and a Hen (another idea where the making and the doing are part of the fun, and again, what other items can you find around the house that would add to your marble run fun?)
• Make Molly’s Friendship Bracelets ::: The Purl Bee (a terrific idea for older kids, one that takes me right back to my own childhood)

There are some terrific indoor fun ideas in the Simple Kids archives, too including:

• Creative Pretend Play Props and Ideas
• Poetry Projects
• Book Making
• Simple Activities for Excited Kids
• browse our recommendations for Books and Music

Fancy and fun food

• Kermit’s Green Apples and Peanut Butter Dip ::: Disney Family
• Peanut Butter and Jelly Banana Burritos ::: Mission
• any of the amazing and bun ideas from Hawai’i Bento Box
• Sweet-zas from American Girl magazine

One of the best ideas for rainy days and the Mondays blahs is building a blanket fort in the living room.  We also recently had a movie marathon of our favorites.

Rainy days are also good for brewing some tea, baking cookies, and curling up on the sofa with your kids and a pile of favorite books.  That may be my favorite way of all to pass a dreary day.

What about you and your kids? What are your favorite rainy day activities?