Looking for inspiration beyond ipads and puzzles to keep the kids busy and entertained during the weeks out of school?

Here are our favourite activities for indoor fun together...for kids of ALL abilities!

Sensory Play:
Winter can be an excellent chance for natural sensory activities, if you can get outside to explore. Snow and ice can help children explore the world around them using all of their senses. Playing in the snow or with ice is a great sensory activity that can promote exploration and discovery, as well as incorporating various learning opportunities.

• 5 senses: watching snow fall, feeling of snow/ice, taste of snow ice, sounds that it makes
• Textures: Is the snow/ice fluffy or hard?
• Language Skills: learn words such as melt, squish, crunch, damp, cold
• Concepts: melting or freezing ice and water
• Creative Problem Solving: how to build structures, how much to fill a bucket
• Emotional: sensory bins with snow can be a great calming activity if your child is stuck inside with energy to burn!
• Fine Motor Skills: strengthening coordination of hands and fingers, and how they work together with their eyes (think of how much coordination it takes to use a spray bottle!)

Homemade Snow
You can add food colouring, play with toys, and try to make snowballs!

Instant snow recipe:
-    Pour 1.5 cups of baking soda into a backing tray
-    Pour ¼ cup shampoo into the same tray
-    Use your hands to mix together for fluffy snow
-    Build a tiny snowman or an arctic habitat!

Visit our Sensory Board on Pinterest for more sensory fun.

Homemade Ice
Fill balloons or different sized containers with coloured water and freeze them (either outside or in your freezer). Once they’re frozen, pull off the balloon or container to create a big beautiful marble that kids can play with in a bin, sink, bathtub or great a city with different sized structures!



Check out this great YouTube video for instructions.

Indoor Activities:

Being cooped up inside still has plenty of opportunities to practise gross and fine motor skills, weight bearing, sensory play and problem solving.

Build a cool fort
Let their imaginations run wild and use pillows, cushions and blankets around a couch or table to create a perfect hideaway for their afternoon snack or quiet time. Creating tunnels that your child can crawl through can help them practice weight-bearing exercises and gross motor activity. Check out these great fort ideas!

Homemade building blocks:
Take old cereal boxes, shoe boxes, or any other empty box and wrap them with construction paper. Help your child draw windows or doors on the boxes (or whatever their imagination comes up with) and use them to build a mini city!

Arts and crafts
Indoor family days are the perfect inspiration to encourage your child’s artistic side.

Bring the "winter" inside by making paper snowflakes and hanging them from windows or ceilings for a winter wonderland. Snowflakes can be personalized and your child can tell you how big or small to they would like them, or if capable, cut the wholes the appropriate size.

Make Play-Doh snowmen. Tip: add some glitter to the Play-Doh for that snowy sparkle and extra sensory stimuli!

Share your fun activities over on our Facebook page or email hhamilton@ctnsy.ca.

2020-03-23