Great crafting ideas for rainy days
We’ve all experienced rainy day blues stuck indoors with energetic little ones. An easy way to entertain your children is to undertake some art and craft ideas and create happy memories.
Rainy day crafts offer a great opportunity for all ages to show off their creative skills and spend some quality time together.
What is so great about crafting with kids?
Crafting together offers a great way to connect and build relationships. Children will love the fun projects you work on and the time you spend together.
You will be creating wonderful memories with your children. Older kids can also join in and share and help each other. In our busy digital world, fun crafts are a great way to stay connected when there is rain outside.
Rainy day activities provide the chance for children to grow in confidence by sharing ideas to try and learn new skills. And of course, using pens, brushes and scissors are all fantastic ways to improve your child’s fine motor skills.
You can really boost your child’s confidence by hanging their finished work on your wall or fridge – showing off their work with pride. Or show your kids that homemade gifts can be made, perhaps through making a simple painting for Granny, older children could try a sewing project or a painted pebble becomes a paper weight for dad in the office.
Crafting boosts academic performance.
Before the Industrial Revolution handicraft skills were more highly regarded than academic activities.
Simple craft projects with kids offers an early introduction into science, engineering and maths – think of patterns that you create through simple craft activities, building and construction when making a cardboard robot, science of mixing food colouring and fabric together.
You are also teaching younger children valuable life skills giving an early introduction into re-using materials.
Old socks become hand puppets, squishy clay becomes a little pot and decorated old boxes become a place to store treasures. Rainy day crafts really do boost your child’s creativity.
Learning new skills.
Crafting also helps build peserverance with learning new skills and such as patience. Many fun crafts involve patterns – think threading beads, sticking mosiac patterns and weaving. Other crafts involve building and construction – think puppet making, cardboard castles and box crafts. These all help kids to develop early math and creative problem-solving skills.
You will find that children will love to play with the crafts they create – boosting their imaginative play. A paper plate can become a scary mask; a cardboard box is transformed into a small doll house or a bed for a favourite toy.
Be an organised mum.
The Internet is a great resource to search for fresh ideas for your rainy day craft projects.
There are hundreds of ideas online that kids of all ages can take part it. It is well worth being organised and thinking ahead of the rainy day crafts you could do – keep a box at hand where you can throw in egg boxes, cardboard tubes, toilet paper rolls, ribbons, coloured paper, pipe cleaners and paper plates and paper towels. Even everyday objects will come in handy such as coffee filters, old greeting cards and bubble wrap.
Crafting tools.
Don’t forget that all important glue, child-friendly scissors and masking tape for your crafty creations. Keep the baking section of your cupboards stocked up too – flour, bicarb and food colouring can all be used in a range of rainy day crafts. Throw in some coloured pencils, paint and brushes and you will be all set for next fun activity.
Rainy day activities on a budget.
By being an organised mum you will save money not having to buy over-priced craft kits. Some of the best rainy day crafts are made using your child’s creativity and everyday junk you have at home.
Painted toilet paper rolls can become a little hideaway house for a tiny toy. A paper plate can become a steering wheel so your little one can race around the living room driving his truck.
What is a fun craft to do at home?
Rainy day crafts are such a great family activity to bond with little ones of all ages and build on their interests. You can create robots, dinosaurs, bugs, beds for dollies or bug hotels for the garden.
Kids can try jewellery making, design cute greeting cards to post to family or dry out flowers to create a nature pictures one afternoon.
What activities can be done on a rainy day?
We’ve rounded up some fun and budget friendly crafts for you and your family to try put when you are stuck inside on a rainy day.
Homemade watercolors
You can make homemade paint using food colouring. There are recipes on line which will include every day stapes such as baking powder and cornstarch.
Painting activities can be enjoyed by all ages and with natural home made paint you wont need to worry too much if the paint goes into your kids eyes or mouths.
The great thing about making homemade paint is that you mix colours together to make light and bright colours – how about a painted rainbow on a cut in half paper plate.
In this activity you will learning about science (mixing colours) and maths (cutting paper plates in half).
Paper plate crafts
You can easily pass a few hours of fun by working on some paper plate crafts. Paper plates can become decorated plates of food using your painting skills; or younger children can write their name on them and deocrate with a bunch of wool or ribbons.
Use round paper plates with straws or pipe clean to make faces, little hats, clocks or even mini umbrellas (fold in half and use a pipe cleaner as the handle).
Get creative and let your little one explore their creative flair.
Nature crafts.
Even though it might be a rainy day outside there are still lots of nature crafts you can do. If you have planned ahead you may well already have some leaves, twigs and even smooth pebbles that you can use as part of your rainy day fun.
A handful of leaves can be separated and glued to a sheet of paper to become a picture. The leaves can be transformed as bodies for people (just draw stick arms and legs); the ears for an animal that you draw, or just literally let littles one feel the texture and shape and let them stick down.
You can also pop a sheet of paper over the leaf and rub gently with a pencil or crayon, an ideal craft to do whilst you sit down and is surprisingly therapeutic. Or paint pine cones and conkers.
Make a bird feeder.
Make homemade bird food by mixing seeds and peanut butter together and putting it in an old yogurt pot and then hang it up in the garden. You may need to pull through some string through the pot.
Then you can extend your activities into bird and nature watching over the following days. This is a great educational project to work on with your children.
Hand puppet crafts.
Old socks and tights can be turned into finger puppets. Use your sewing skills or attach handfuls of wool for hair, stick on googly eyes and create a sock puppet monster your child can play with for hours. You may even create a show for your finger puppets to act out, perhaps about family or school life.
Finger puppets.
Help your child turn dried-up marker pens into finger puppets. Decorate with cut out paper faces or even design a cute little hat. Draw on eyes and a face. You could also wipe away those rainy day blues by sewing some cute little finger puppets together. This might be a better activity for older children to sew and younger children could decorate.
Wooden spoon puppets.
Wooden spoons are relatively cheap to buy and really handy to have in your rainy day project box. This humble kitchen accessory can become a wooden puppet by adding hair, felt clothing and face and eyes.
You can easily make more than one puppet as part of your craft activity so everyone in the family can join in. This offers the perfect story telling opportunity or role play different scenarios.
Marvellous Marbles.
There are endless rainy day activities you can do with marbles. From creating a marble run to conducting some paintings using marbles your children are sure to have lots of fun with this fun project.
A marble run can be created sticking cardboard tubes together in various directions and watch your marble slide through the tubes.
Create marble paintings.
Dipping the marbles in different pains and then simply pop a piece of paper in a large baking dish. carefully dip your marbels in different colours and then slowly let your marbels roll around in your baking dish – tipping the dish slightly from side to side to see the colourful patters your marvelous marbles will create. Use paper towels to mop up any mess.
Paint blowing
Paint or food colouring can be used for this classic craft activity. Simply blop some paints on a sheet of paper, sit down at a table and blow the paint through a straw. See what patterns your child can create. Who can blow the furthest?
Cereal box theatre.
Keep old cereal or shoe boxes and turn them into mini theatres. You can use your finger puppets, or draw pictures and stick to bamboo skewers to move your characters around.
Decorate your theatre with grand curtains, signs to ‘boo’ or ‘hiss’.
There are lots of free templates on line for your scenery and characters.
Pebble painting.
Painted rocks – keeping a collection of smooth pebbles and paints in the house can lead to a creative way to spend some time. Hide the pebbles for siblings to find as part of an indoor treasure hunt. You could even write down clues as to where to find the treasure.
Paint faces, rainbows, and even animals can become ladybirds and other bugs.
Homemade board games.
Encourage your little ones to make a home made board games – like snakes and ladders but you can incorporate personal themes, favourite pets and challenges. This is often a fun school project too. Use your favourite board games as inspiration.
Painted lanterns.
We love this idea – create lanterns of love. Get your children to paint or colour pictures and then stick the pictures to the outside of a clean glass jar. Once the pictures have dried, watch the smile on your children’s faces when you add a tea light inside the jar.
(Never leave lit candles unattended).
Create a story dice activity.
There’s two aspects to this rainy day craft idea.
Get crafting by getting kids to make a dice from folded paper or card, write challenges or story angles on each face. Then take turns to roll the dice and see what your challenge is.
You could make a story telling dice, or write challenges uch as ‘sing a funny song’ or ‘touch your toes five times’.
Googly eye crafts.
A great boredum buster is to grab a pack of stick-on googly eyes, and then get sticking to objects around the house. Create a monster by sticking googly eyes on an old egg box, paper plate or a smooth pebble. Let your child’s creative streak develop with this new fun project.
Keep crafting.
We are sure you’ll agree that there are tons of rainy day crafts for you and your family to do. Sometimes the most simple ideas entertain children the most. Let your child lead the way and enjoy the connection. Its a cliche but children grow up so fast one day then wont want to sit and craft with you.
