Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Rainy Day Fun!

3, 2, 1, BLAST OFF!

My three little ones finished preschool last week.  We have a long summer looming ahead of us!  My older two are signed up for a week of camp each.  This is the first summer that all four kids are old enough to go to Vacation Bible School (woo hoo!).

Normally, I take the kids to the pool everyday.  Yes, everyday!  We can walk to our pool and the kids love the water.  Yesterday we went for about 2 hours.  They ate better and they slept better!  Today it is overcast and rainy.  The rain is scheduled to move out by the afternoon, but we have no plans for this morning.  We can't play outside and we can't go to the pool (It also isn't open yet!).  Right now the kids are building and decorating "monster spaceships".  I'm not quite sure if they are hunting for monsters or if they are the monsters!  But, they are all playing nicely together and the TV and tablets are turned off! 

I try to keep a variety of things on hand to pull out if it is rainy or even if the kids are just bored!  The kids are using some old moving boxes that were stacked in the storage room corner to build their spaceships.  I pulled out some Dora Stickers from the Prize Closet and a  box of new crayons (who doesn't love new crayons!).  They are using these items to decorate the boxes.  Mess will be a minimal (I hope!), they are playing together and having fun (thank goodness they have lost interest in drawing on walls!).

I have mentioned our Prize Closet before in my posts.  Three of my four kids have January Birthdays.  We have a very large and generous family.  I typically will put some birthday or Christmas gifts aside and take them out through out the year. This way the toy actually gets played with and not cast aside in the Holiday Madness and Mayhem.  Things that I bought and forgot about, also get put into our Prize Closet!  I bought my oldest son a Lego kit on "Black Friday" (day after Thanksgiving for our International Readers!).  I planned on giving this to him for Christmas, well I forgot!  Then I was going to give it to him for his birthday.  Forgot about that too!  Now I will have something to pull out one day this summer!  When I am out and about if I see things at Five and Below or the dollar section at Target, I will pick them up and put them aside for prizes.  I also save leftover "goodie bag" items and put them in the Prize Closet!  That reminds me, I have some Mickey Mouse stickers and crayons from the twins first birthday, that might make some good spaceship/monster-hunting decorations too!

Something else that my kids love to do is to cut items out of catalogs and magazines.  My girls can spend hours cutting out things from the latest Pottery Barn Kids catalog.  They take the pictures they have cut out and glue them on to construction paper.  Sometimes they will make lists of things they would like to have other times they will create room scenes on the paper!

What are some tips and tricks that you do to get through a Rainy Day with your children?

Thanks & stay dry!

2 comments:

  1. That is wonderful that you take the kids to the pool every day. They must love that. The prize closet is a great idea! When there are a lot of toys, some do get 'cast aside.' They are new again if they are out of sight and mind for a while. Thanks for linking to Multiples Monday on Capri + 3.

    : 0 ) Theresa

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    1. Thanks Theresa! Getting them to the pool helps to keep me sane too! Everyone is much, much happier after being out and splashing about. I will admit that I do feel like "mommie dearest" taking their toys away, but it is so nice to have something "new" to pull out in a pinch!

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