It's Raining Outside! Now What?

Entertaining our children during long summer days can be tricky on a budget but specially so during a health crisis. 

What can you do when it's raining outside? 

Here I share my all time favorite  rainy  day solutions that I learned from my mother, the queen of  kids entertainment on a budget. 

1. Arts and Crafts of course!  Mom kept a large container full of recyclables (plastic bottles, cans, cardboard boxes), as well as tape, glue, glitter, ribbons, buttons and various size scissors on hand for projects. My brother wou spend hours building  robots or  cityscape for his toy cars and trucks and I would become a French "Artiste" building sculptures and decorative art.

2. Rediscover Toys! We cleaned out the toy box together. It's like getting brand new toys, which of course will entertain small children for quite some time!  My mother would set up a "toy hospital clinic" for us to "save" (repair) any toys in need of tender loving care. It was a great twist to playing doctor.

3. Declare Archeology Day! My mother would give us some old white shirts from dad to use as lab coats and break out the Play-Doh. We took out a book of dinosaurs and set about recreating them with as much detail and precision as we could. Sometimes we event built a dino jungle!

4. Have a Tea Party and Spa Day!  This is a great idea to teach kids table manners and personal hygiene but of course we didn't figure that out. We would help mom make finger sandwiches and set the table for tea, then she would  give us manicures and pedicures sometimes even a haircut or trim and then we would sit and have our tea party in our best "british" accent. We felt very special and had lots of laughs. 

5. Indoor Picnic!  Pack your kids favorite lunch in a wicker basket. Spread a blanket on the living room floor and pretend you are in the great outdoors having a great time. If it's really gloomy and dark outside you can light up candles and read favorite "camp side" story books to the children until they fall asleep for a nap!