The UK is not known for its beautiful weather. Even summer isn’t guaranteed. This year, August was freezing. And now that we’re in winter, days are short, grey and wet.
So what do you do with your kids when outside just doesn’t look appealing? here are some suggestions:
At-home family activities
The obvious items on this list would be board games, building a fort or baking cookies. But we know all of these. So here are some other ideas:
1. Indoor Obstacle Course
Obviously this is very much dependent on the size of your house. But you can use furniture, cushions, and household items to create a fun and challenging obstacle course. Your kids can crawl under tables, jump over pillows, or balance on a line of tape. You can let them do the course for time if you decide to add an element of competition.
2. DIY Craft Projects
- Paper plate masks: Decorate paper plates to make animal faces or superheroes.
- Salt dough sculptures: Make salt dough (flour, salt, and water) and create fun sculptures, then bake them to harden.
- DIY Slime: Make homemade slime using glue, baking soda, and contact lens solution.
3. Indoor Scavenger Hunt
This might keep your children busy for quite a while… Create a list of things for the kids to find around the house (a blue sock, a wooden spoon, a pencil, etc.). You can even add clues or riddles for extra fun!
4. Science Experiments
- Baking soda volcano: Create a volcano using baking soda and vinegar for a fizzy eruption.
- Oobleck (Non-Newtonian Fluid): Mix cornstarch and water to make a fun substance that acts like both a liquid and a solid.
- Color-changing milk: Add food colouring to milk and drop in some dish soap to watch the colours swirl.
5. Home Spa Salon
This is a very involved project. Depending on how elaborate you’d like to do this, here are things the kids will need to do
- Choose a name and design a Spa sign
- take bookings in person or over the phone
- set up your salon for the appointment
- perform the spa treatments – this can obviously go both ways wheer they give and receive a lovely spa treatment
Treatments could be back massages, foot soaks, face masks, manicures and pedicures while playing relaxing music and having a candle or incent sticks simmering in the background (supervised, of course)
6. DIY Sensory Experience
Personally I love feeling different textures. If your kids are up for this (it’s a sensory experiment and not everyone may like it), create bins filled with rice, pasta, water beads, or sand. Let them guess what the item in the bin is and let them just enjoy using their hands. You can even add small toys and let kids explore and play.
7. Rock Painting
Fo those of us who live by the coast, this is an easy one. Go to the beach (in Brighton Worthing, the beaches are pebbles so there’s definitely no shortage of stones to use) and pick a bag of rocks and stones. get your watercolour or acryl paint out and let your creativity run wild. These stones can be used in your garden to decorate your flowerbeds, decorate your bathroom or any other surface.
Leave-the-house activities
Most of these will be paid-for activities but if you’ve exhausted all the options at home, these might still be great ideas to burn some energy, get creative or do something fun that’s a it out of the box.
1. Ice Skating
When I was younger, I totally fell in love with ice skating. I even wanted to do it as a fully-committed hobby for one winter.
That never happened though…
Ice-skating is obviously a seasonal activity but between November and January, most cities have an ice rink to visit. Small children will be able to use penguin guides to not fall over but there’s usually enough room for more advanced skaters to have fun too.
2. Trampoline Park
Nothing for the faint-hearted but luckily kids don’t tend to have a fear of humping up and down. Trampoline parks like Flip Out are great fun and you can kill hours there…
3. Get Crafty at a Pottery Studio or Cafe
If you’d like to get creative without having to clean up the mess yourself, go to a pottery place like Art-ful Cafe in Worthing to create your own ceramic artwork.
Or you could book a Pottery Class at a studio like Chisel Pottery in Chichester, Painting Pottery Cafe or Hot Fox Pottery in Brighton.
4. Escape Room
This is something for older kids – they’ve got to be able to read and understand puzzle clues. But if you have tweens or teens, this is a great opportunity to leave the house, hang out and do some fun brain gymnastics.
Local Escape Rooms to check out are Mind Works in Worthing, Bewilder Box and Pier Pressure in Brighton.
5. Crazy Golf
Indoor Mini Golf is definitely a favourite of mine – even without having kids in tow. There are a few in Brighton and Chichester like Globalls, One Under and Ocean Paradine Adventure Golf.
You’ll definitely spent at least an hour there and could top it off with a meal after.
6. Go outside and get wet
While it may be uncomfortable to go out in the wet and cold, kids usually don’t mind a lot. Out and about, you can
- jump in every single puddle and have a puddle splash challenge
- make mud pies
- build a bridge across a puddle
- paint rocks with mud
- make leaf boats and float in puddles
- catch rain in your mouth
- make a muddy footprint trail
Just make sure everyone is dressed to stay warm and dry. And once you get home, cuddle up on the couch with a hot chocolate.
Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list but maybe it sparked an idea for the next time the weather isn’t necessarily suitable for a playground visit or a walk across the South Downs?
Any of these activities also are a great option to document your fun. Family photography is not just something we do on a bright and sunny day. So if any of these things are a family favourite and you’d like to capture the fun your kids doing those things, get in touch and let’s have a chat about documenting your next rainy day adventure.
