It’s raining cats and dogs outside—and your plans for the day are thwarted.  It’s 10 am, the weather is gloomy, and an idea pops into your mind. That’s right!  It's a good idea to spend time with your kids and do some cool stuff indoors!

Sounds exciting, right? So, let’s jump right in!

7 Fun Things to do on a Rainy Day with Kids:

1.Explore the great indoors with a treasure hunt

With older school-age children, keep your day fun and lively with a treasure hunt.  Here’s how:

• Make a set of clues or riddles for every player, each leading to the next one and finally, to the treasure.

• Slid them into envelopes marked with numbers to help treasure hunters to keep track of the course.

• Here’s come the fun part! You get to hide the “treasure,” and you can place them everywhere. For example, you can leave it in the closet or under your bed.

If you have a few kids, they could play as a team or partners to uncover the treasure together. For toddlers and preschool age children, just turn it into a hide seek game.  

2. Indoor camping for the night with a lunchtime picnic

If the rainy day descends into the night and it isn’t a school night then have a camp-in for the night, complete with flashlights and popcorn. If you already have a pop-up tent, then it’s easy to set up camp for indoor activities for babies. If not, just, pop up a card table and cover it with blankets to make a tent for the day. Throw a few pillows in and let the kids play.

Then spread a blanket on the floor and have a lunchtime picnic with the kids.   If you have a picnic basket that will make it even more fun. At the end of the day, you can make hot chocolate and cookies or popcorn for a snug and cuddly-kind-of-night for you and your family.

3. Play Charades with your family

Charades is an entertaining game to play when indoors. The charade concept is simple, and you have to act it out for your team to guess what it is. For instance, the phrase or word that you picked out is basketball. Then, act it out by dribbling an invisible ball or shooting in the air.

It’s a great way to enjoy indoors and a good laugh with your family.

If Charades doesn’t seem like much fun, play a round of Pictionary instead, it is even available as a game app!.  Everyone loves to draw!

4. Take time out and Bake Something!

Baking is fun when done together. So, whip out your baking essentials and bake. Nothing cures a gloomy day with chocolate chip cookies!

You can prepare a glass of milk and dip the cookies in. Or better yet, have your children lick the leftover batter.  Isn’t baking so much fun?

If the kids are teenagers, then turn it into a pizza for dinner with pizza dough made from scratch or almost scratch.  Assign tasks to each teen so that one will make the dough, one will cut the toppings, one spreads the sauce… etc. It will not only be fun, they will also learn how to make a good pizza.

5. Dress Up and have a Tea Party

Let your kids take the lead on having a tea party. Then, watch their creative imagination come alive by playing dress up as they serve you tea. You could even make fancy hats to wear if you have time.  You can also introduce them to different herbal tea flavors and teach them how to hold those tea cups properly.

6. Amuse your family with mind-boggling games

You know what’s the best entertainment there is? Board games. You heard it right! These fun brain teasers can make this dull weather fun.

There are tons of mind-blowing board games at your disposal. Many of the popular adult board games are available for the little tykes, too so they can learn the fundamentals of Monopoly,  Scrabble, or Clue. For older kids, there are Trivial Pursuit games and one of our favorites is “Baloney” a game for liars.  

You can even play card games like Uno, Spoons, or Crazy Eights.  These games are fun and can teach the kids that it isn’t whether you win or lose, it is the fun you have playing a game together!.

7. Teach your children to do chores

With this rainy weather, you can do chores into a fun task. You can post an individual list of duties for your kids and after every completed task give them a ticket. After all of the housework is done, whoever has the most sticker wins the “Helper of the Week Award.”  You can pick the award, it could be as simple as staying up for an additional half hour, or picking a movie video to watch, or it could be something as simple as letting them plan a special activity to do on the weekend. Also, you could even say if they continue to be a helper of the week, they can buy the toy of their choice. Sounds easy, right? Maybe, you can even convince them to have a day trip out of town and let a professional house cleaning service clean the house for you!