Cabin Fever Got You Down This Winter? Try These Family Fun Indoor Activities!
It’s wintertime and cabin fever is rampant for many of us! Whether it’s Christmas or holiday break with the kids or when it’s snowmageddon outside and you’re running out of ideas to keep your children entertained, you are sure to find some family fun tips and activities for both indoor and outdoor play here!
Since we moved from Boise, Idaho to Lafayette, Indiana a few years ago, 2016 was to be our FIRST winter here in Lafayette. I had told my kids that the winters here would have a LOT more snow than we ever got in Boise. We were used to it snowing maybe an inch or two than melting the next day and that was about the most we would have throughout the winter off and on. Going sledding required a trip to the mountains for us. So needless to say when it started to snow here we were excited to watch it accumulate. Yet the most it has snowed here our first winter in Indiana, was about an inch or two as well and it melted within a few days! There was even a few nights where it was SIXTY DEGREES…in DECEMBER?! What the what?!
That winter in the Boise, Idaho area, they had a total of 39 inches of snow! Holy Cowabunga that’s a LOT of snow! Well, that amount of snowfall in a place not accustomed to that much snow led to of course to school closures and even road closures. They literally went back to school for ONE day after Christmas break and had six days and in some areas had around 9 snow days! Crazy right? After having two weeks off for Christmas break than another unexpected week after that, my sisters and sisters-in-law were pretty much going bananas!
This inspired me to put together a roundup of some great tips I’ve received from creative moms and dads. So buckle up and sit tight and enjoy the ride! Scroll to the end if you would like a printable of this list as well!
100 Fun Indoor Activities for Kids to Beat the Wintertime Blues and Cabin Fever!
- Have a wedding for all the unmatched socks in your home.
- Make a list of 100 things you can do with…. (ie: inflatable ball, balloons etc)
- Hold a movie marathon of your favorite family movie series ie: Harry Potter, Toy Story, Chronicles of Narnia, Shrek, Ice Age, Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Marvel, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, Tinkerbell, etc. (viewers discretion)
- Introduce your children to your childhood favorite movies ie: The Princess Bride, Home Alone, A Christmas Story, The Goonies, Ferris Bueller, The Breakfast Club, Karate Kid, Indiana Jones, Labyrinth, Pretty in Pink, E.T., Back to the Future, The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music, Jurassic Park, etc. (viewers discretion)
- Have a “Puppy Party” play games and eat snacks like you were a puppy!
- Start your own YouTube channel and make videos to send to your family and friends, you could go viral!
- Find old toys in storage and pretend its Christmas!
- Play pretend school (bonus if they do ACTUAL homework! *wink*)
- Have a dance party to your favorite playlist
- Have a coloring party and color with your kids!
- Teach or learn together how to sew, knit or crochet.
- Teach your children basic cooking skills.
- Organize your closets together and make it a game!
- Read your favorite books to each other.
- Play board games in a fun way; dress up silly or in fancy clothes and use silly accents.
- Make a bucket list of all the places you want to visit as a family
- Make a list of your goals as a family and personal goals
- Work on boy or girl scout achievements.
- Give each other extreme makeovers
- Video chat with a distant friend or relative.
- Take silly selfies and send them to Grandparents
- Write letters to Grandparents, long-distance relatives, missionaries, assisted living homes.
- Make duct tape crafts
- Make paper airplanes and race them!
- Make indoor forts!
- Play hopscotch!
- Make indoor s’mores!
- Play hide and seek
- Have a Karaoke party!
- Blow bubbles and make a game of it!
- Play charades
- Pull out your yearbooks and photo albums and let your kids laugh at the hairstyles with you.
- Indoor Snowball fight!
- Indoor Scavenger hunt!
- Fondue party!
- Teach your child basic home repairs
- Learn a new skill together
- Work on family history together.
- Tell funny stories about your childhood with your children.
- Make a digital scrapbook of family adventures
- Slide downstairs on cardboard box or in a sleeping bag!
- Make edible play-dough
- Play cup stacking games
- Make paper snowflakes out of paper plates
- Make homemade slime
- Build a snowman with boxes
- Let your kids dress you up and do your hair
- Take a bubble bath with TONS of bubbles (bonus if your kids REALLY need a bath!)
- Write secret messages with a white crayon on paper than let your kids crack the code with paint!
- Get out the legos and build something that isn’t part of a kit!
- Make your own bookmarks
- Make your own bean bag toss
- Make a race track with painters tape on the floor and race your toy cars on it!
- Make an indoor obstacle course with random objects around your house.
- Make your own playmat with an old white sheet and Sharpies.
- Make tie-dye shirts with Sharpies.
- Have a ‘Drive-in’ movie night with cardboard boxes!
- Have a glow-in-the-dark party!
- Discover what famous people you’re related to together.
- Make crafts from the footprint stamps of your feet and hands.
- Have a hot cocoa bar complete with marshmallows, whipped cream, candy canes and chocolate syrup! Yum!
- Make Popsicle stick cabins.
- Make a pine cone bird feeder.
- Perform an act of service for a neighbor, shovel a driveway, clear a sidewalk etc.
- Make snow cones out of REAL snow!
- Make a pillow fort than…
- Have a pillow fight!
- Make snow ice cream!
- Print crossword puzzles, mazes, etc online to do together
- Make homemade birthday cards for relatives for the whole year!
- Get a head start on spring cleaning!
- Make your own puzzle from a picture glued on thick paper.
- Put on a play
- Plan your garden for spring
- Play dress up
- Make your own busy bags for quiet time like appointments or church
- Create your own science lab and search up kid-friendly science experiments online.
- Camp out in the living room, sleeping bags and everything!
- Make puppets out of socks than….
- Put on a puppet show!
- Go through all the toys and donate what they don’t use or have grown out of.
- Go through your clothing and donate what they don’t use or have grown out of.
- Make collages out of magazines
- Make a vision board from old magazines
- Plan a summer vacation
- Go ‘ice skating’ using tissue boxes or juice boxes as ‘skates’.
- Hold a friendly wrestling match.
- Have a Nerf gun war.
- Play basketball with wadded up paper and a wastebasket.
- Have a sword fight with pool noodles!
- Make a ‘laser beam’ maze in your hallway with crepe paper pretend your spies!
- Make your own snowglobes with baby food jars, glitter, glue and your imagination.
- Play balloon tennis using balloons and fly swatters!
- Have a toy car wash in the bathtub *bonus the cars get clean!*
- Make homemade ice cream.
- Make homemade sensory bins (TONS of ideas on Pinterest!)
- Have a spa party complete with pedicure, manicure and facial!
- Indoor picnic with all the stuffed animals!
- Make stained glass windows with colored tissue paper.
- Make an ‘activity jar’. Put your favorite indoor activities on separate pieces of paper place in the jar and draw one every day!
I really hope you enjoyed this list I put together for you. I would love any other suggestions from my readers as well! What do YOU like to do as a family when you’re stuck indoors?
Would you like to have a printout of this list? Here you go!
===> 100 Fun Indoor Activities Printable <===
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As the founder of Why Not Mom; a unique online directory of mom-owned boutiques and mom-invented products, Tonia has strived to create a unique organization of female business owners, creating a diverse network that assists each other in driving more business to one another, in addition to providing tools and resources to achieve success in their business endeavors. It is her passion to make Why Not Mom the world’s largest online directory of women-owned businesses in the pursuit of strengthening families and supporting small business owners worldwide.
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