40 Rainy Day Ideas

Rainy days when your kids are little will be the days you will miss most when they grow older. Days where you could just stay home and enjoy the sweet sound of rain and snuggle without purpose on the couch reading books and watching movies.

Here are forty ideas to make the most of rainy days in Brisbane and anywhere!

Firstly- if you live in Brisbane Australia then you will want our ultimate guide for the best places to go with kids on a rainy day in Brisbane. This rainy day list includes ideas for toddlers, kids and teenagers. 

Things to do on a rainy day at home

• Make Slime– Or refer to the other Craft & Fun Ideas page of Brisbane Kids
• Have a camp-out in the backyard, the rain makes it more fun, cleans the tent and you simply leave it up until it is dry! 
• Build the biggest indoor cubby house the world has ever seen. 
• Bake with your kids– let them be in charge of the decorating
• Jigsaw time!! Do it to a soundtrack of Mozart!
• Teach your kids some easy card games. Show your toddler how to play snap, your primary schoolers to play Go Fish and your teenagers to play Rascals and Royalty
• Rent/stream a movie online, or at the library, get some popcorn and make a day of it.
• For rainy day fun with early learnings, do some collage- Trawl out your old magazines- look for colour themes.
• Sort through your toy boxes- the kids will play and you can declutter.
• Make an indoor obstacle course.
• Have a lunch picnic on the floor- spread out a blanket for authenticity.
• Make paper aeroplanes and test them out.
• Make puppets from old gloves or socks and hold a fun drama performance.
• Play indoor hopscotch with washi tape
• Embrace the rain- jump- play and run in it.
• Go for a walk under an umbrella.
• Make slime goop- cornstarch + water + food colouring- watch it go solid when u leave it alone, and melt again by the heat of your hands- Magic.
• Set up a shop front- a bit of pantry stuff and some coins.
• Make pikelets.
• Have a concert – any item can be used for a concert i.e. doing skits/plays, dancing, singing, magic shows, showing off a special talent, telling jokes etc. The kids can practice their talent and could even make tickets and programmes.
• Become storytellers by making up your own stories – they could even be spooky stories for a rainy, gloomy day! You could even record a child’s storytelling on tape so it can be played back to them another day. (I highly recommend doing this, from experience)
• Put on some music (old records would be good) and dance in many different ways i.e. disco, tribal, crazy contemporary! – Or choose one song and choreograph a dance.
• Make robots/monsters/box people/cities out of old boxes or suitable throw-away items and paint them.
• Make paper mache masks or creatures using balloons, newspaper/scrap paper, flour and water – paint when dry.
• Write a letter to Grandma, Grandad or any beloved relative or friend and post it to them. Take the kids to the post office for the full experience.
• As it gets closer to Christmas – make your own decorations or start hanging your Christmas Lights this can also be used at Easter, Halloween etc.
• Decorate blown eggs – blowing the white and yolk out of an egg can take a long time for a child!! This will keep them occupied for a while!
• Make up a family time capsule.
• If you dare, make instruments out of household objects and JAM – this could be an item to do in your concert!! (Rubberbands are great for guitar strings stretched over different objects to create different sounds, different levels of water in glass containers make great notes, rice or grains in containers for shakers – use your imagination and anything can be an instrument!
• Make boats out of alfoil and race them down the flowing gutters on the street – or on the way to the street, find a great boat-shaped leaf and race it against the alfoil boat!
• Put different-sized containers out in the rain and have the kids try and think about which one will fill first- prizes for the winner.. and everybody.
• Download Duolingo (there is a free version) and teach the kids to say a couple of greetings in different languages. 
• Make mudpies and sell them in a shop- fill disposable containers with mud, decorate them with leaves, flowers and nuts and then sell them in an outdoor shop.
• Go buy some clay and do some clay work.
• Look at how to draw tutorials on YouTube. To avoid overwhelm, get the kids to choose an animal first and simple Google, “how to draw a dog” or whatever is the chosen animal
• Your local library, wherever you live, has a mountain of kids activities- and they have books!- rainy times are the best times for good old-fashioned reading.
• Arrange your bookshelves and the kids’ bookshelves into colour blocks. 

Are there 40 Rainy Day ideas on this list? Did you count them?

It is true, there are a few more, but we like whole numbers and will update again when we reach 50. If you have some ideas to help us then let us know!