Have your kids been suffering from the heat wave? Mine have. I can only let them do so much TV time, so I try to cut back, but when you lose several hours of outside run-amuck time, what do you do?
Here are some stay-busy activities and toys that will keep your kids busy.
Wooden Doll House Castle to Build and Play With Indoors
I was sent this product to review and it is really cool. It’s a BigJigs Heritage Princess Palace that is a lovely wooden playset. The pieces are wooden and there is assembly required. My seven year old can do it by himself, but he’s uniquely talented at building so I would say under 10 years old might need adult help for some steps.
Teamwork to build the wooden princess castle
They have had so much fun building, assembling, taking it apart, and of course, playing with the characters that were included in this set. Even my boys like playing with it because there are both male and female characters. The characters have enough costuming to be beautiful, for example there is an obviously royal couple, without being locked into a single fairy-tale character. My children are thus free to play their own stories, or reenact several stories however they choose.
Rulers of the wooden toy castle
Play Dress-Up With Costumes
We buy costume pieces on sale after Halloween and put them in a big “pirate chest” costume box that the kids then have access to on a year round basis. I love how much they enjoy getting these out so often to dress up and play imaginatively. Want to add some activities to your costumes? Try making your own Hawaiian leis, or let them personalize a super hero cape.
Building Block Sets – Mega Blocks, Legos and K’Nex
My kids still adore building blocks. The more the merrier. We’ve purchased both Legos brand blocks and Mega Blocks brand because they are interchangeable so my kids can mix and match them as desired.
Lego and Mega Block Creation
We tend to get the specialty kits in Legos like Star Wars ships and buy the city Mega Blocks sets. K’nex has a lot more engineering type possibilities (they can build an amusement park!) and we’ve been given or purchased more than one set of these as well.
When in Doubt
When in doubt just turn the garden hose from the plants to the kids. That is highly amusing also.
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How do you beat the heat and stay sane when your kids have to stay indoors?
It’s hard to choose what activity is my favorite. Now that my daughter is older, she likes to read and draw.
We spend hours on end with Duplos/Megablocks. I don’t think we would survive summer without something to build.
When my daughter was little she loved this kind of stuff and attending kindermusic, using her hands. Now, she’s a violin star (high school ;-). Connection? I don’t know, but it didn’t hurt.