While us Canadians haven’t had too bad of a winter this year, I find we still get a little stir crazy by the end of January and if you aren’t one of the lucky ones to go South then we need to find a way to make the best of it here at home.
Below are some ideas for bringing a little fun and excitement into your life over the winter months:
v Mexican Night – fill a piñata with candy and dollar store items and hang it from the rafters in your rec room, make homemade burritos, nachos and/or tacos. Let the kids colour Mexican flags to decorate your house. You can even get some sombreros to wear and maracas to shake.
v Have a regular family game night where everyone gets a chance to choose a game. Some of our favourites are monopoly, Scrabble, Yahtzee, go fish, Pictionary and Wii bowling.
v Have a movie night – make different flavoured popcorn, make the room dark, turn the phones off, get your favourite blankets and cuddle up on the couch together.
v Go Camping in the Living room – one of my kids favourite memories is having a ‘camp in’, my husband would get the big box fan out and put a fitted sheet around it, turn it on and voila, instant tent! You can get your sleeping bags out, sing camp songs, have a chocolate fondue with marshmallows instead of roasting them and tell stories.
v Hawaiian Luau – I saw some little umbrellas and leis at the dollar store yesterday which inspired this blog and I thought how fun it would be to have some friends over on the March break and pretend we are somewhere warm together. Virgin Piña coladas for the kids, dressing up in bright flowered shirts and having a hula hoop challenge are just some of the ideas I have for our get together. Another fun idea is to have an indoor sandbox for the kids; you can put play sand inside a baby pool or if you’re not that brave, you can give them a big bin of rice or beans to play with.
v Baking is always a fun and tasty thing to do in the winter. Having the oven on, on a cold wintery day and the smell of cookies or bread baking is so nice. There are so many recipes online to choose from, home-made pizza dough, bagels, etc.
v Home Renovations – even little kids can help to design and paint a room and teaching older children how to hammer nails and putty drywall are good life skills to have. It’s a rewarding feeling to say that your family worked on a new room together.
v Kids Yoga – get your family in shape by teaching your little ones some fun animal yoga poses. If you need help, go to You Tube and search ‘kids animal yoga poses’.
v Play Games – hide and seek, musical chairs, and night at the museum (turn the lights down low and give one person a flashlight, they are the museum guide who shines it on each ‘statue’ and if they catch the statue moving or laughing then they are the new guide) are a few of my kids favourites.
v Tea Party – even if you don’t have all girls, a tea party can still be fun (my husband has been to many!), have everyone dress up, make some little sandwiches and get out the fancy dishes and table cloth.
v Crafts – my kids all love doing crafts. A trip to the dollar store can provide you with paper, glue, stickers, cotton balls, paper plates, popsicle sticks, glitter, etc. There are many ideas online but some that we’ve had fun with are popsicle stick houses, bean filled tambourines, paper bag puppets, and cards for Grandma and Grandpa.
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