Things To Do In School Holidays When It Rains

On Friday morning I read this tweet from the lovely Liesl at HoppoBumpo:

“Looking out the window & wondering if it could really rain for the 5th consecutive day of the school holidays?”

At the time of writing we have had another two more days of rain and very cold weather, since Liesl’s tweet. For Melbournian’s we have become quite used to not having much rain. Having it come in school holidays, does mean that the kids where inside the house a lot more than I anticipated. During school holidays I like to encourage the kids to go outside, explore, be active and let them find things to occupy themselves.

Having them cooped up in side, though meant that I needed to get them started on a few activities to defuse the boredom and bickering that was occurring from time to time! Here are some things we did on the rainy days during the school holidays:

Cooking

Things to do when its rainy in school holidays

We actually baked these biscuits on the first Monday of the holidays. This recipe is perfect for school holiday cooking because it make so many biscuits (approx 100). I can then add a biscuit to the fruit and crackers for morning tea and if we have friends visit, we also have plenty to share.

How To Make Marshmallow Lollipops

We also made Marshmallow Lollipops as a special school holiday treat. They were very easy to make – the kids could do them by themselves! (A little messy though.)

Indoor Hopscotch

Things To Do In Rainy School Holidays

Inspired by a post I saw some months ago on Rookie Moms we pulled out the masking tape and made up our own hopscotch inside. Their was some debate over the design of the hopscotch that we were making. The three year old has a favourite number book that had a picture of hopscotch in it and was adamant that ours should look like that, so we went with it.

Tea Party

Tea Party

One of my sisters gave Possum a beautiful ceramic tea set for Christmas last year. It is very sweet and perfect for use at a toy tea party. We had the tea party at morning tea time and everyone joined in (although the bigger boys only came for the food!).

Camping Inside

Camping Indoors - Rainy Day Activity

The kids made a cubby house during the day and then asked if they could sleep in it. So down came the sleeping bags and they were camping inside. They then tried to convince me to light a fire (we do have a working fireplace that we don’t really use) so they could toast marshmallows. We settled on a compromise of dipping marshmallows into melted white chocolate. They were completely delicious and a lot less work for me than the toasted variety.

Looking After Animals

Rainy Day - Petting Animals

Lovely friends of ours have a guinea pig and rabbit. Possum has been very keen on having a pet, so I offered to our friends that we could look after them while they were away. We have had them for a couple of days now and the novelty hasn’t worn off yet. We take them from their hutch and place them in a room where they can roam with out escaping (Foxy the guinea pig can abscond otherwise) and the kids will sit there for up to an hour petting and watching them.

What have you been up to during these rainy school holidays?

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