Speaker 1 00:00:02 Hello and welcome to a Wonder Care podcast. I'm Sheena Mitchell, pharmacist and mom of three. I combine healthcare and practical advice to support you on your parenting journey. This week I'm talking about something that is affecting most households in Ireland at the moment who have children that have just finished school. It's not really health related, but it might help with moms or dad's mental health. The weather has been less than ideal since they finished. It's windy, it's rainy, it's wet. It's just been pretty nasty and it doesn't look great for the next few days. So I decided to put together a list of rainy day activities for children that they can do at home to keep themselves entertained during days where you're all trapped inside. Here are some lifesaving mood altering activities that might just help you all to keep your sanity over the summer. Speaker 1 00:00:59 Just want to say most of these cost very little. Some of them do require different items and different levels of parental effort. So I'm gonna call them all out and you can see which ones suit your home, depending on the age of your kids and what supplies you have to hand, and hopefully you can put them to good use. If you're concerned about writing all of these down, fear not, I will turn them into an article so that you'll be able to print it off and stick it on the fridge so that you always have an activity to turn to when you hear the dreaded words and board. Let's get started. A Barbie pool party or a Paw Patrol pool party in the bathtub or even the sink <laugh> can be very helpful. Baking a lot of people are great at it. I have to say oftentimes I think that's too much effort making slime that falls into the same category, but effort in that one. Speaker 1 00:01:49 If you're looking to do any of these, there's loads of recipes and ways to do it online. So just search, make slime or search easy baking recipes for kids and you'll find loads. Next one, listen to a story on Audible or any other storytelling technology that you can get your hands on. Build a den, always popular in our house using blankets and pillows. An indoor scavenger hunt. You can actually print off some of these online as well so that you don't have to think about anything. You can just have someone tell you exactly what to hide. Save all those online shopping boxes and even old cereal boxes and give them to the kids to build a car, plane or boat out of. They can spend ages decorating them. This kind of stuff can also be really helpful to make musical instruments, so it just depends on how much quiet you need. Speaker 1 00:02:36 Recently we turned an old fla heavens porridge, wick coats container into a shaker by adding some dry rice, you can also just attach a large elastic band to anything cardboard and they can flick it off it and drums can be easily fashioned out of pretty much anything. So you can tell the kids to make their own marching band. A good old game of hide and seek can be good if they're in the mood for it. If moods aren't great, there's nothing wrong with setting up a cinema night. Make popcorn and a cozy cinema scene in the living room and watch their favorite movie. Musical statues always good when they're energetic. Balloon tennis or keep you up peace. This is brilliant. So you can actually make paddles for balloon tennis out of a wooden spoon and paper plate, and then just have a little stash of balloons in the house so that they can use the paddles to <laugh>. Speaker 1 00:03:28 Play tennis with the balloons. If you don't feel like making paddles, just tell them to play. Keep you up. Peace. The balloon's not allowed to hit the ground. If you're feeling brave, you could take on tie dye, but obviously you need dyes, elastic bands and old t-shirts for that. Another kind of cool one is they can make butter and all you need to do that is cold heavy cream, and you can Google how you make it. If you're in a mood for hands-off parenting, let Alexa take over and tell them to ask her silly questions. She'll keep them busy for a good while. If you're energetic, try a pushup contest. There's also board games and making ice pops, making puppets, and they can even be sock puppets using little bits of felt and those googly eyes that they can just glue onto them and things like string. Speaker 1 00:04:13 Let them attach that for the puppet's hair and tell them to put on a show. Get them to try and improve their origami skills. There is loads of child suitable tutorials online and it's really good for their dexterity. They can make little bunnies and all sorts of things. You can go to the effort of buying proper colored or a gamy paper, but it's not necessary for younger kids. It can be fun to tell them that it is. Toy bath time, washing their toys can be a lot of fun. A basin with lots of bubbles on a towel. Obviously, keep your floor dry on the ground, can be great for toddlers and they can really enjoy giving their little toys. Little baths plus cleaning is always helpful. Play-Doh, not so much of a tidy one, but definitely a fun one, and it keeps them busy for ages, as does making Loom Band bracelets. Speaker 1 00:05:01 Other things they can craft and make are things like decorations for their bedroom. It's also easy and cheap to make a bowling course in your home, so all you have to do is get some bottles, put a little bit of water in them, just plastic bottles and set up a bowling lane. All they have to do then is throw a ball and see who can knock over the most bottles. Another good one is to make an obstacle course. You can do this by making them climb under chairs over couches, et cetera. For kids who wanna take it a little bit easier, they could have a fancy dress, tea party or they could play, Simon says, or they could read. And a really fun activity if you've had a couple of wet days, is to set up a camping zone in the living room. So grab any blankets or sleeping bags you have and let them camp out in the living room for the night. Speaker 1 00:05:47 For creative kids, they can use toilet paper rolls to craft into little animals, and older kids can design these really well. To make cool desk organizers. They can use the internet to learn some magic tricks. You can have a little browse and search safe websites first and then let them learn some skills while they're doing some of these activities. You can start to tidy the playroom and then let them rediscover all old toys. As soon as I threaten to send any toys to the charity shop or gift them on to family, they suddenly get very, very interested in them <laugh>, I dunno if it's the same in your house. Simple things like making paper airplanes can be good, and they can also use the internet to learn how to draw their favorite animal. There's loads of really child appropriate videos on YouTube kids for that. Speaker 1 00:06:35 Get them to catch up on their correspondence, maybe write a letter and draw some pictures and post it to their cousins. There's nothing more exciting than sending a letter and then getting one in return. Dig out your old magazines and let them cut them up and make a scrapbook. Or if you don't feel like doing any baking, that doesn't mean they can't still decorate cupcakes, so just buy some plain cupcakes and icing and let them at it. You could have a teddy bears picnic inside. Tell them to invite their teddy bears and lay out a luscious, lovely picnic on a blanket. Or you could challenge them to making some sort of vehicle or house outta Lego. If you've got supplies, you could try and do some face painting. Children love having their face painted jigsaws always handy. Sometimes we set up a big 500 piece one and leave it on a table that we know we don't have to tidy up or clean for a few days, and it's amazing how people will just come and go from it and add another little piece to the puzzle. Speaker 1 00:07:31 Use masking tape to make a racetrack for toy cars, or you can get them to play shops if they have a toy till, or you can just give them some fake money. Actually, you can get them to make fake money. I've done that before where <laugh>, where they will draw coins and notes and cut them out of paper and then use them to sell temporarily their toys to each other or books, et cetera. Making jewelry can be a nice way to keep them entertained for ages. So if you have little beads in a craft set and even bits of dry pasta can be used, you can extend this by allowing them to paint the pasta first and let it dry. <laugh> even add some glitter. Mind you, you'll be finding glitter all over your house for months. Speaker 1 00:08:15 I just want to interrupt this episode for one little second. Okay, more than one little second, but not a lot of seconds. Summer is here and it's definitely my favorite season. The only downside is all of the circulating dust spores and pollen that can make life miserable by affecting your sleep and respiratory health. That's why I'm so delighted that Salum Plus are supporting this season of Wonder Care podcast as the Salum plus device filters these dust and pollen particles out of the air when used every night in your bedroom and circulates fresh clean air for improved sleep and comfortable airways. I cannot believe we're on season five. Where is the time going anyway, back to the pod. Rainy days are also an opportunity to make a rain gauge. So just using a plastic bottle and sticking a ruler inside and measuring how much rain is actually falling when you start to get hungry, you could make some homemade pizzas when you get really bored of the indoors, you can just get them to put their wellies on and go splashing in puddles outside. Speaker 1 00:09:14 Who doesn't love doing that? Another use for masking tape is that you can make an indoor hop scotch and just use a little beanbag or something as the stone speaking about jumping all over your house. The floor is lava God they love. The floor is lava. Use cushions as safe spaces to jump on and make them follow a trail around the kitchen or living room to land on a couch. You could have a paper cup stacking competition. See how high or quick you can build a paper cup pyramid. The same can be done with coins. See how high they can make coins stack. Very useful to read the money boxes for this. Simple ones include coloring and.dot sheets, and one of the coolest, which I'm not gonna lie I haven't done, but it is on my agenda for the next week, is to make rain clouds in a glass jar. Speaker 1 00:10:04 So to do this, you just have to fill a jar with water, add some shaving cream to the top of it, and then drop a few drops of food coloring in and watch the rain fall from the clouds. That's adorable. That's definitely next on my list. Anyway, out of all of the activities that I have listed now, it's a good idea to pick ones that children can do themselves without your involvement and write them all down on a little pieces of paper. So separate little bits of paper and make a box and call it the I'm bored box. Put all of the little pieces of paper into the box and then let them randomly pick out activities that they can do to entertain themselves, saving you coming up with the ideas all of the time. Buy some balloons, buy some paper plates, start some balloon tennis. Start making rain clouds and glass jars, and hopefully all of this will lead to a little bit of time for you to go make lunches, do the laundry, and all of the rest of it. I doubt there's gonna be much relaxation time, but if you can join the kids and have some fun, enjoy. I really hope that you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, give us a little follow or review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends.