Snow Day Activities

One additional perk to working in education is SNOW DAYS! With a huge storm sweeping through the north east today, work and daycare are closed. Well, my work was...Jeff wasn't so lucky. So it's just me and the littles today hanging out. What to do today though?! There are a few things we need to do today such as unpack from our weekend trip, clean up the kitchen, and do some laundry, but of course we also need to PLAY!

This weekend we visited our good friends Mary, Rob, and their little boy Parker (check out Mary's awesome blog here!) The boys played so, so well together and Ginny sufficiently destroyed the playroom. All in all a good weekend. While visiting, we stopped at IKEA (!!!) to walk around and pick up a few things. We picked up two expansion packs for Charlie's train set and a few packs of plush food items to restock the play kitchen. If IKEA is good for one thing - its awesome kid toys.

Coupled with the Melissa & Doug blocks he got for Christmas, Charlie has been building and rebuilding his train town for well over an hour and a half this morning while Ginny napped. I kept telling him - if he wakes up the baby she will want to play with him and knock over his castles. Amazingly, he's been perfectly quiet. ;-)

The stuffed food has been a huge hit as well. We purchased three sets of food - a fruit basket, a veggie crate, and a shopping basket full of various things. There are a lot of new types of veggies Charlie doesn't recognize, so it was fun to teach him about mushrooms, cabbage, and eggplant. He still doesn't quite understand, however, why there is a fish in with the veggies; he demands to know why its not in water. I think I have a future animal rights activist on my hands.

This really was great timing - new toys right before a snow day. Can't beat it.

Today is also a great day to break out Charlie's new arts and crafts box. I purchased a 4 compartment storage container after Christmas at a steal - all because it was red and green. Who cares? Each compartment has a different age appropriate craft for him to use. One layer has markers, crayons, and scissors, another has stamps and stamp pads, another has Play Doh, and one has paints and brushes.

This was a great solution to the multiple boxes (or lets be honest...stuff thrown everywhere in a drawer) that we had for him. One of the things preventing us from doing crafts was the set up time and clean up time. This makes it easy to bring it out, use it, and put it away.

Trains, blocks, and crafts are pretty standard, but old favorites. Check out my "Stuck Inside Activities" board on Pinterest if you'd like some ideas (or like me, want to feel completely inadequate for what your kids do while stuck inside...) May your snowy days be full of fun!

Follow Jen's board Stuck Inside Activities on Pinterest.