Indoor fun

here in the mountains, we have our share of snow days. and the four day weekend can quickly begin to feel like a forty day weekend when the kiddos can't get at least some of their wiggles taken care of out-of-doors. 


i happened upon this post recently from tokketok, and decided to give it a go, today. 

they made a great car/boat playmat complete with railroad tracks, lake with fish, and a pasture for the grazing of animals. they used a roll of kraft paper, which i didn't happen to have on hand, but we substituted some cardboard from a few boxes we had hanging around. 


our result wasn't quite as neat and tidy looking as the one in the pic, but the kids had a great time, (i let them use SHARPIES!!!) making their 'village' as they called it, and then hauling out the legos later to populate it. 

they even made little houses with roll-up garage doors for the cars to go in. 

and then.... of course ..... we had to go bigger.

so i pulled out an old sheet, that we use as a dropcloth sometimes when we paint, 

and the playmobil town 

came into being. 

complete with ancient ruins

(yes, the tigers are eating the horses.)

a lake and campground site at Yellowstone National Park

(there are geysers and some sulfur flats just out of the picture.) 

and a skate park.

so we were able to while away the snowy hours in a flurry of creative fun today. 

thanks again to tokketok for the idea!

and for the road, a few other fun things to do indoors:

play dress up

put on a play

make sock puppets

paint

bake cookies

play games (we particularly like Jenga Max, and Twister Hopscotch)

paint your fingernails (annika recommends purple)

read out loud

make a blanket fort, and then pop some popcorn and sit inside and watch a movie.

and

Check out childhood 101 for TONS of awesome, happy-fun ideas!

... 

what does your family do when outdoors are off limits?