Indoor Fun At Half Term

Lets face it the weather has been pretty awful in the last few weeks and this week isn't any exception. The half term is here and with the weather being rain virtually all of the time, we practically have no choice but to stay at home, when we do venture out it is usually to visit friends or relatives, however this still means most of our time is being spent indoors. With two very lively boys this can be quite a challenge for me and very boring for them.

Center Parcs have set a challenge this month, to get creative with your children and to make a game to have some indoor fun. Now I am not the most creative mummy and I am certainly no Picasso - But I am partial to a bit of quieter time and laughter which making, creating and playing always seems to bring. 

Taking inspiration from Lisa's tips on indoor family time, Center Parcs challenge, Lisa's tip is;

"Screw up some old newspaper and stick it together to make a ball. Decorate it, grab some empty toilet roll holders and make your own indoor ten pin bowling alley". 

I hadn't got any empty toilet roll holders so we put our own spin on the game. Using plastic cups we made an in-door's skittle set, I got the boys to paint the cups in a colour of their choice, Liam choose blue, Adam Purple they really enjoyed painting each cup it took a little while for us to get through them, but the boys concentration and creativity really shone through they love to paint, we put the cups to one side so they had time to dry before we played skittles.

Whilst our new lovely skittles game was drying out, We moved onto a different task I gave the boys both a medium sized box each, with my help we cut out a mouth shaped semi-circle on the box, then I drew on the boxes two circles for what looked like eyes and they both painted the eyes on there boxes. The boxes eyes dried pretty quickly - quite a good job because there concentration with the creative side of making was beginning to waver slightly. My idea was to take it in turns to roll balls along the floor into the hole, The boys had very different ideas they decided to fetch all there push along cars line them up and take it in turns rolling the cars into the hole.

Even though the hole was quite big they still managed to role the cars around the boxes, but they had great fun, laughing and giggling no squabbling over anything and they played this all evening until it was time for a bath and bed.

I thought they would be fed up when they got up the next morning or have lost interest, much to my surprise they went back to the boxes again, bruming, zooming and whooshing cars and anything else they could find with wheels into the box, in which they have called "Robot" it was lovely to see them playing and most importantly using something that had cost nothing, that they had helped to create.

Of course later that afternoon the boxes were quickly losing their novelty, we fetched out the skittles/plastic cups that had dried out, again the boys wanted to use there cars to knock them down, it was great they were using there imaginations, saying "I am winning" and playing together as a team.

The games were really simple to make all that was used was,

• Plastic Cups (left over from a Party)
• paint
• Cardboard boxes (picked up from a supermarket)

 

The two games kept a two and a three year old very happy. For the cost of virtually nothing they were both really simple, but really effective, it just shows a little bit of imagination and some bits lying around the home can lead to a fun filled afternoon for children. The indoors can be just as fun as out.

‘This is my entry to the Center Parcs and Tots 100 February challenge. If I’m chosen, I would like to visit Sherwood forest’