Indoor Activities in Colder Months?

[ceeveg]

What are some great, engaging toys and crafts during the winter months? We have a fort, play kitchen, books, puzzles, paint, crayons, paper, play dough, wooden blocks ... can you suggest any other great toys for indoor time that encourage playing for short periods on one's own?

[crunchy_mommy]

Well I have no clue how to get DS to play on his own lol but I have been trying to think of fun indoor activities...

-Add something to the kitchen set to make it seem new & exciting. Yesterday we did dried beans (and after pouring them for a bit, DS had a brilliant idea to get a spice jar from the kitchen & 'spice' his beans ) -- you can also do uncooked pasta/rice etc.
-A simple scavenger hunt
-Stickers... actually this is one of the only things DS will do mostly on his own, hand him a sheet of stickers & he'll stick them all over a piece of paper (and himself)
-Musical instruments... put on some music & play along
-Felt book -- just take a large piece of felt & make it into a board or a book & then cut out other felt shapes, then you can tell stories, rearrange the shapes on the board, etc.

[ceeveg]

Thank you so much! These are GREAT suggestions!!

[colleen2851]

DD loves to do art projects. I recently went to AC Moore and bought a bunch of paints, brushes and things to paint. They have a bunch of simple puzzles, shapes and boxes made from wood in the dollar section. So I'll take those out whenever she's bored.

She also goes to gymnastics once a week and loves that like crazy.