Preschooler Activities for Rainy Summer Days

Over the last few days, a torrential series of rainstorms have punctuated a painfully dry summer. While I was spending much of my time with my daughter engaged in outdoor play and other summertime activities, the rain storms forced us to stay indoors. The easiest way to alleviate a kid's boredom on a rainy day is to turn on the TV, but I'm careful to limit the amount of time my daughter spends engaging in solitary screen-time. Here are some of the ways we've worked to defeat the rainy day blues this summer.

1. Make sock puppets.

You know that drawer full of unmatched socks? Go ahead and accept that you'll never find a mate for most of them. Get out some paints and encourage your child to make puppets out of them. Once your child is done, watch the puppet show unfold.

2. Go camping... inside!

We had plenty of marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers left over from a camping trip earlier this summer, so we decided to have a make-believe camping trip inside the house. We built a "tent" in the living room using blankets draped over furniture, turned off the lights, and snacked on s'mores by an imaginary camp fire. It's a great way to kill time with your preschooler on a rainy day.

3. Play a board game.

When was the last time you sat down with your preschooler and really played a board game all the way through? Pick out a long-lasting game like Monopoly Junior and pass the next hour or so playing it. The rainy-day blues are likely to evaporate as soon as you take the time to sit down with your little one and enjoy this simple pastime.

4. Clean up.

When you're stuck indoors with your kids, there's no more functional way to pass the time than to take advantage of the situation and use the time to clean house. Go ahead and scrub your toilets, put away books, re-organize your kids' clothes, and fold laundry. There's never going to be a better time to do it than on a rainy summer day, so get to it now and enlist your child's help.

5. Make snack crafts.

Bring out the cookie cutters and make cheese snacks in the shapes of hearts and stars. Cut out bits of apple in the shape of diamonds. Consider using a sewing needle and some thread to make a "necklace" out of grapes, and then eat it. There are plenty of fun, healthy snack crafts that you can do with your children, so use them as a way to make the time go by faster on a rainy summer day.
Don't let the weather get you down on a rainy day in the summer, and don't let it spoil your preschool-age kids' chances at a fun day, either. By taking the time to do something enjoyable with your kids despite the rainy-day blues, you can turn a bad day into a wonderful and memorable one.