5 Indoor Activities for Kids and Dads

Getting stuck in the house due to bad weather with kids can take a toll on your brain. Staying calm and getting housework done while the children are bouncing off the walls is near impossible. If you can’t beat them (and you can’t) join them.

Below are several ideas for keeping the children busy and giving you some interaction with your kids. Try one or two, or go nuts and do them all.

Blanket Forts

A rainy day favorite (and my own personal favorite too!) was to remove all the items from the dining room table pull the chairs out and cover up the whole set in a large blanket. It makes a great “tent” to pretend we were camping, or exploring a cave.

Playing this game with your kids allows for them to use their imagination and pretend they are in far off places and fantastic settings. Pretend to be cavemen surviving the chilly ice-age, or be fearless explorers, tracking lions on a safari. The possibilities are only as limited as you and your child’s imagination. Have fun.

(Side note: Seeing blanket covered furniture all over your house will invariably tick off your wife when she comes through the door. So make sure you clean up before she gets home)

Card Games

Do you have a deck of cards? Then you’ve got tons of different styles of games you and your kids can play at the kitchen table. Anything ranging from Go-Fish, to match game, to even easy poker games (I know a guy who taught his kid to play blackjack, mentioning that it helped his kid learn to add numbers)

To play Match Game, turn all the cards face down and pick two w/ an attempt to match the face to its matching number and color. When you find a pair, keep them and earn a point.

Go Fish is played by you dealing 5 cards to each player (7 each for only 2 players). Turns are taken requesting cards that your opponent might be holding, resulting in them turning over the requested cards, or saying “Go Fish” in which you draw from the stock pile. The goal is to collect the entire “4 sets” and eliminate all the cards in your hand to win.

Flash light Tag

Flashlight tag combines the best of hide and seek and tag into a fun night time game that’s great for the whole family. You’ll need a fairly dark house and at least one flashlight in order to play.

Set boundaries, and then let all participants know where you can and can’t hide. The seeker waits at “home base” and counts while the others hide. The seeker then searches for the others while leaving the flashlight on at all times (no covering the light!).

The other players attempt to make it back to home base before they are spotted with the flashlight. The last player caught is now “It” and the game continues. You can also add time limits so that the really good hiders don’t hold up the game for everyone else.

Craft Time

Some construction paper and some colored markers or pencils make craft time easy and fun. You can go as elaborate or simple as you wish. Make anything from colorful pictures to hang on the fridge, to milk carton birdhouses that hang on the trees.

This can take as much time as you would like. There are millions of resources on the internet to instruct you to make various craft projects. Pick one, gather your material, and get crafty.

Family Photo Albums

This is a great bonding activity for you and your children. Get out and dust off the family photo albums and take your kids for a trip down memory lane. Show them old pictures of family and friends and explain to them the great memories you had when you were their age.

Show them baby photos of themselves and teach them about how things were before. Kids love to see pictures of younger looking parents and grandparents, it helps them develop an understanding for the aging process and lets them better identify with their elders.

There are plenty of indoor activities that you can do to enrich your time with your kids. Get creative and think of your own or take from any of these ideas. Remember dads, it’s not always about what you do, just that you do it.