The 10 Best Ways to Entertain My Stir Crazy Kids Inside

Posted by Christie in Daily Life, Indoor Fun on Monday, January 19th, 2009

I am not going to lie to you… I am not a member of Winter’s fan club! It is the one season that I can totally do without, I do not like to be cold. I do not like to drive in snow and ice. I do not like wearing warm hats, they make my ears stick out… and I do not like trying to entertain my children indoors ALL day long because the windchill has dropped below five degrees.

They are not allowed to have outside recess right now because the weather is too cold, they can’t play outside at home because it is too cold outside… and they are climbing the walls!! 

So out of shear desperation for my sanity I have compiled the following list that I am creatively entitling… “The 10 Best Ways to Entertain my Stir Crazy Kids Inside”.

♦ Playdough, it may be a huge mess but it entertains my children for at least an hour… long enough for me to write a couple of blog posts and maybe grab a cup of coffee.

♦ Dancing, my children love to dance and it is a great way for them to get a little bit of exersice. So every once in a while I like to crank up the music to a fun song and get down with the best three dancers I know.

♦ Legos! For my boys they are the best way to keep their attention focused for a long period of time.  I have even seen them play Legos for three hours without stopping, do you know how many chapters of my novel I can play with during that time?

♦ The Wii… thank the heavens for whoever invented this thing! My kids all love it and so does my husband… I can get time all to myself when they are all playing. It gets them moving and once in awhile they even convenience me to put down the laptop and embarrass myself with them on it.

♦ Our bouncing room. When I feel like my three cabin fever stricken children are really about to scale the walls I plug in the best $200 investment I ever made in my sanity, an inflatable jumping room.  We blow it up in the house and the kids can jump out all the energy they want while I fold laundry, clean the floor, or get some work done. The only thing I have learned is that this is not the time to get caught up on phone calls… their laughter is deafening… but it’s good to know they are having fun.

♦ Indoor scavenger hunt: A few weeks ago, the kids were really wound up and no matter what I did they were still bored. So I ran to my computer and threw together a scavenger hunt list with pictures that kids could dechiper. They had to run around looking for a bar of soap, a shoelace, a bandaid, flashlight, balloon, flower, and other random things. They loved it

♦ Floor murals. I took a huge role of paper and rolled it out on the kitchen floor and handed them a box of crayons, markers, stencils, and stamps. They spent an hour creating all kinds of fun pictures.

♦ A good movie. I am not a big fan of letting the TV babysit my children, but I will admit that during the winter months I have been known to find a really good movie that will entertain my children for an hour or two when they cannot go outside.

♦ Camping inside, my kids love to drag out the entire contents of my linen closet and build a great tent in the living room. We always top off the fun with smores in the oven.

But THE best way that I have found to keep my kids entertained during these long winter days…. (Drumroll please)… me. Seriously, I have found that when I turn off my computer, walk away from my desk, don’t do housework for awhile and give them my undivided attention that everything runs so much smoother… why does that seem like the hardest thing on the list to do? One of my New Year’s resolutions was to do it more.

Got any great ideas to keep your kids busy during the winter when they are cooped up indoors? Share them here, because let’s face it… we are all stuck in winter together.



If you've enjoyed reading this post then please subscribe to our Full Text RSS Feed. And if you just can't get enough of us, feel free to follow LittleStarZone on Twitter or join the Facebook group "Fans of littlestarzone.com".


Related Posts



Leave a Reply