Cold days…

It was cold last week. We’re talking frigid. For several consecutive days, my weather app read -25c / -13F. We’ve never experienced such a cold snap in this city, but thankfully, we were prepared for it. You see, we did have one totally depressing cold day the week before. We were completely house-bound and actually a little tired of playing kitchen! It was such a lonely, boring, cooped up day, that I gladly gave up one Friday evening to scour every interesting toddler blog or YouTube video I could find in that three hour period in search of new activities to keep us busy. A few new ideas and a small amazon.com order of inexpensive supplies kept us sane in the afternoons last week. We still try to get out most mornings or else I find someone climbing the walls. Clearly, only so many crafts can keep little boys busy! Here are five simple activities we did together to stay sane during the horrid temps…

1. Playing with letter magnets on the fridge.
Sorting by color, putting them back into the box, making patterns and of course flicking them all off the fridge. End of activity.

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2. Watching water beads grow.
Selecting colors and a couple dozen beads to put into the water, trying to grab them from the water, squishing them, bouncing them, playing with them in bowls and measuring cups, playing ‘search-in-the-bath’ with them and of course dumping them all out for mama to pick up. End of activity.

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More ideas for next time we play with the squishy beads here on Pinterest. Super fun.

beads

3. Good old-fashioned coloring.
We graduated from boring wax crayons to [washable!] marker pens. We played matching the caps, colored on paper, tried to color in between the lines in a coloring book and of course, in a moment of panic, frantically knocked all the markers down and started throwing them. End of activity.

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4. Playing grocery store with Bruno, le-nounours-teddy-bear, in the role of the cashier.
We chose objects to purchase, selected a card to pay with, bagged the purchased items up and of course, started throwing all the play fruit and veggies and all of mama’s real credit cards. End of activity.

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5. Baking.
This activity became an old classic when I found out that it could take us up to an hour and a half to bake the simplest of cookies. And with a toddler strapped to the chair! Pictured here is Ayo baking lemon shortbread cookies to have something to use cookie cutters to make fun shapes with. We mix, we measure out and taste all the ingredients and eventually get high on brown sugar and of course start to ruin recipe proportions and the capacity to eat dinner. End of activity.

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BONUS – One activity I hope we can do together one day, but didn’t have the courage to supplies for is this edible glow bath water. Doesn’t that look fun? But this one is only useful for the dark. And thankfully, papa is home most evenings to play with the kids anyway.

What are your favorite indoor activities for toddlers? We are thankfully back to park and playground weather this week, but we may need some ideas in our toolbox for the future…

4 thoughts on “Cold days…

  1. Love this post! My favorite part is your inclusion of how activities came to an end 🙂 We build LOTS of forts around here on indoor days. And we jump on beds and practice gymnastics and play with legos and trains…all activities for when your boys are a wee bit older!

    1. Oh yes, we love trains too! We will leave legos for a little later..too many pieces to pick up when the box gets dumped onto toddler’s head!

      Forts! Yesssss!!! Can’t wait for forts not to be destroyed!

      Thanks, friend!

  2. Such awesome ideas! Thanks for sharing your water beads, we still have a few floating around. Gotta keep them away from the fuzz or they get demolished, end of activity. Glad to hear you did make the lemon shortbread… sounds delish, was it?

    1. No rocket science here. Just a little switch-‘er-up from reading all the books we own! Did I mention we took loooooooong baths too!? Haha!

      Lemon shortbread was delish and the number of ingredients manageable for toddler activity! I squeezed about 1.5 TBSP lemon juice in dough to add more lemony flavor. The measly bits of zest weren’t cutting it for me!

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