While this summer has brought us some beautiful weather, there are still those rainy days where we are forced to stay inside. Are you looking for new, cheap activities for your children? Here are two fun and easy recipes for entertaining your little ones:
- Homemade Play-Doh
Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 cup water
½ cup salt
1 Tbsp. crisco oil
2 tsp. cream of tartar
Food coloring
Directions: Combine all of the ingredients into a sauce pan and cook over medium/high heat (stirring constantly) until ball forms. Knead the doh for a couple minutes. Store in an airtight container.
Play-doh is a good interactive activity to encourage engagement with your child by showing your child how to roll the doh into a ball, poke the doh with your finger, or form the doh into fun shapes and animals. Play-doh can also be used as a sensory activity, in which the squeezing and tearing of the doh helps children use their sense of touch to regulate their behavior and calm their bodies.
- Home Car Wash
Ingredients:
Squirt bottle with water
Hand soap with pump
Scrubbing tool (e.g. sponge, toothbrush)
Towel
Toy cars
Directions: Put some cars into a bowl and ask your child to spray them with the water bottle. Then ask the child to pump some soap onto the cars. Take the scrubbing tool and have the child scrub the different parts of the car (e.g. wheels, doors, windows). Then ask the child to spray the soap off with water before drying the car off with the towel.
This car washing activity works on using a child’s fine motor skills with the squeezing of the water bottle, pumping of the soap, and scrubbing of the car. This activity can also encourage following directions by asking the child to complete a step before moving onto the next. If you have a number of colored cars, you can work on color identification by asking the child to wash a specific color of car with each wash.
Brittany Hill, MS, MSW, LSW, DT