How to Entertain Kids on a Rainy Day on Vacation!
Minnesota summer vacations are the best! Warm days on the beach, cool nights by the campfire and, of course, eating the perfect s’more. So there’s nothing worse than having a rainy day when you had planned to spend time on the lake. But you don’t have to dread the chaos of being stuck inside with the kids! Save the family vacation with some of these great rainy day activities that will keep everyone entertained for hours.
- Make an indoor obstacle course with whatever you have laying around. Use blankets, pillows, or chairs to make a simple a obstacle course. Time each child as he or she goes through the course and see who can complete the challenge the fastest.
- Do a scavenger hunt! Scavenger hunts are great because you can do them a lot of different ways. Have a color scavenger hunt where the children have to find items of a particular color (ex. find things that are green). You could have children look for items that start with a particular letter sound (ex. find objects that start with the letter m). And, of course, you can do a good old classic scavenger hunt where you make a list of specific items and have the children look for them and the first person to find them all wins.
McKayla always comes up with a take-home craft for the kids. Last year it was a plaster footprint made on the beach!
- Bake or cook together. Cooking with kids is so fun and they love it! Find a simple recipe to try and have your children help you collect ingredients, measure, pour, and mix. Cooking is a great learning activity for children and a fun hands on project. The best part, of course, is having a delicious treat afterward.
- Make your own play dough. Play dough is the perfect rainy day activity for hours of inside fun. For even more fun you can make your play dough with just a few basic ingredients. The following recipe makes a decent size batch. If you want to add one package of kool aid the play dough will smell good. 🙂
1 c. flour, 1 c. water,  2 t. cream of tartar, 1/3 cup of salt, 1 T. vegetable oil and food coloring of your choice. Mix all ingredients except food coloring in a sauce pan until thick. Once it begins to thicken, add food coloring. Remove from heat. Stir until its much thicker. Remove from pan and cool.
- Have an indoor picnic. Get out a blanket or a beach towel and set up a picnic on the floor inside. With a little imagination you can make all the rain go away.
- Play the senses game. Blind fold the players and have them guess what different things are by taste, touch, sound, or smell. The player that guesses correctly wins!
Facepainting is a favorite activity during our supervised kids’ activities
So this summer don’t let the rain ruin your day, just bring the fun inside!
This week’s blog is written by our very creative Kids’ Activities Coordinator, McKayla Bloch. Every week during the summer vacation season our own “Pied Piper” entertains resort kids with games, activities or crafts. Look for future posts from the kid-savvy McKalya on entertaining the kids while on vacation.
Bring on Summer!
Kim & Jay