Fun indoor activities to entertain your toddler during the cold front

With the temperatures expected to plummet this weekend, we’re betting you’re wondering what you’re going to do with your little ones as they turn the house upside down. And while play dough activities, camping out in the living room and baking is always popular with kids, here are some other cool ideas we’ve run past our kids who have given them a thumbs-up!

Home-made 10-pin bowling

Make your own pins at home with 2L Coke bottles. Fill different bottles with pasta, buttons and beans, and use different size balls to roll them over. Your child can help you fill the bottles. Picking up the objects with their fingers, or tweeezers and dropping them into the bottles will keep them occupied for some time and develop their fine motor skills!

Target practice

Tape a cool “spiderweb” across a doorway with some two-sided tape. Get the kids to scrunch up balls of newspaper and throw them, one at a time, at the spiderweb to see if they can get any to stick on the tape. To make it a bit more difficult, you can also use cotton wool balls. This throwing activity is great for their gross development skills.

Also Read: What to do with the kids during load shedding

Lather up

If your kids are tired of play dough, get them to squirt some of dad’s shaving cream in a pan or in a baking tray for some wonderful tactile, sensory play. Let them add some food colouring and let them see how the colours transform as they draw pictures with their fingers. Put out an old towel or newspaper because trust us, it’s going to get messy.

Cross the line

Another cool indoor activity is to tape lines, zig-zags, circles and squiggly curves on the floor. Have your toddler try walk on the lines without losing his balance. Have him walk forwards, and then, when he’s mastered that, ask him if he can try it backwards? When they get tired of that you can always change it up and use the tape to create a game of noughts and crosses or hop-scotch.

Train spotting

If you have empty boxes lying around the house, we love this idea from handsonaswegrow of making a “holiday train”. Get the kids to line up the boxes in the passageway and give them crayons and paint to decorate the train engine, passenger carriages, and so on. You can also give them some coloured paper or old magazines to cut up as they “engineer” their train. Once they’re done, you can help connect the boxes for them with some string or ribbon so they can pull their “train” around the house for additional fun.

Sonya Naudé

Editor of Living and Loving. She is responsible for developing the brand’s overall content and business strategy.

She has worked on various newspapers and magazines as a journalist and editor over the years. Passionate about health and wellbeing, she has won several respected industry awards for writing and editing. She’s featured on radio and television as a health and parenting expert numerous times and has judged the Pfizer Mental Health Journalism Awards on three occasions.

Outside of work, she enjoys trying out recipes, reading crime mysteries and thrillers, practicing yoga, and exploring new destinations.

Learn more about Sonya Naudé.

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