How do you keep your littles occupied during the winter months?

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Permalink Reply by Erica Appel on October 19, 2009 at 6:00pm

I need help too, now that my oldest is 2. We go to the Y during the winter so I can get my exercise in and that breaks up the days. We also go outside and play in the snow....bundled up of course!

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Permalink Reply by Megan Andrews on October 19, 2009 at 7:14pm

My son is four and he loves to play toy hide and seek. I will get one of his toys and hide it somewhere in the house and then he has to find it. Every round we use a different toy. He also loves to practice drawing numbers in a dish of flour, can be messy but he has a lot of fun.

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Permalink Reply by Maureen on October 20, 2009 at 11:08am

There are a bunch of great ideas listed on this thread. I have an on-going list of toddler activities posted just so that when I need an idea, I have one place to look. I'm always adding things to it when I find good ideas.

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Permalink Reply by Audrey on October 22, 2009 at 10:26am

My kids are all teens now, but when I had this very problem (living in CO) the winter months were always the hardest to keep them occupied.

There are tons of sites online that have coloring pages (I know they get boring) but there are also sites that have crafts kids can make. It helped occupy their time and we had some great little things around the house. (centerpieces, door hangers, magnets on the fridge etc) but there are crafts for even the real young ones.

We did a weekly scavenger hunt. Little things around the house. Sometimes the items they found were ones I was missing and knew one of them took it and I needed it back, so they had fun with that.

We also had story time, and math sheets. We did each of those as time activities. They learned to read faster and all four are great at math!

I also got a basket and went to the dollar store. Our "Reward" basket. When they are little they thing it's big stuff, so when I had to work (I'm a WAHM), I had them help with little things, and then they were wanting to do extra little chores so they could get something from the basket.

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Permalink Reply by Rhonda Cratty on October 23, 2009 at 7:57pm

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Permalink Reply by Maureen on October 25, 2009 at 4:44pm

Also a fun activitiy to have on hand are I Spy bottles or I Spy bean bags.

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Permalink Reply by Amanda Winters - A+ Plan on October 26, 2009 at 12:19pm

I was wondering the same thing! I have a 1 year old and it seems like the only option is to join a music class.

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Permalink Reply by JOdy on October 26, 2009 at 5:33pm

I live in Canada and have 6 kids...so on long winter nights we love the following:

Movie nite: we pick a movie, popcorn and of course Jammies! my youngest daughter loves this, I think it's the snuggling that they enjoy the most!!!

Scrapbooking: it doesn't matter how young or gender (i have 4 boyz 2 girls) and they all love to make cards, their own pages and we can do this for hours, plus, they love looking at our albums together and "remember when"

puzzles: we have a table set up that just is our puzzle table...it amazes me how the younger ones can even find pieces, 500 pcs take us about an hour...1,000 pcs are usually out for about 2-3 days

Love all the other ideas!
Jody In Beautiful BC

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Permalink Reply by Beth Ann Bentley on October 27, 2009 at 9:34am

You know those photos that you don't want to throw out, but you also don't want to keep? I put them in a box. Then on days when the kids can't go out side, I put out that box, paper, scissors, coloring stuff, glue sticks, stickers, whatever I can find. I leave it out there all day and just let the create collages, cards for family and friends, mini scrap books, etc. It doesn't really matter what they make, they are entertained for a long time and it is it something they go back and forward to all day long. It is also fun to see those old photos and have them put to use (of sorts.)

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