When the weather keeps your little ones from playing outdoors, they may quickly become bored, frustrated and upset. Most children spend the majority of their days inside a classroom and look forward to coming home to play outside. The creativity associated with outside play is essential to the development of kids’ brains.

If the weather restricts this time of growth, they may face setbacks. Fortunately, various indoor activities provide a fun and creative outlet for your little ones. Before diving into these crafts, projects and games, we must evaluate the benefits of creativity on the developing brain.

Creativity and Growth

It is vital to nourish young minds for the sake of their development and future functionality. Around 75% of the brain’s growth occurs after birth, in its youth. When children engage in creative play, it stimulates connections between nerve cells, which promotes necessary growth.

When nerve cells connect, it helps kids develop gross motor skills, like jumping, running, walking and coordination. The connection also promotes fine motor skill growth, like writing, tying shoelaces, buttoning clothes and other detailed handwork. Outside of physical development, creative play promotes exploratory thinking and cognitive development.

Little ones develop divergent thinking when engaging in creative play. This type of thinking is exploratory and solution-based, allowing you to navigate various scenarios. Cognitive development also derives from this sort of play. It promotes children’s expansion of language, memory, information processing and spatial awareness skills.

Creative play also allows kids to apply their classroom lessons to the real world. These experiences help children understand the importance of education and solidify the concepts they are taught in school.

Indoor Activities

To ensure that rainy days do not restrict your child’s necessary cerebral development, you can provide creative indoor activities for them. There are four simple and enjoyable projects families can engage in together to learn and artistically express themselves. Children of all ages may perform these activities, with varying supervision levels, to maintain a creative outlet on house-bound days. 

1. Create a Solar System

You can teach your little ones about space from the comfort of your own home. Building a solar system is both educational and creative. Parents will need access to string, foam spheres, different colored paints, fish-eyed hooks, a black marker, small chains, tongue depressors and a mini drill for this activity.

Start by having your kids paint the spheres based on their interpretations of planets in the solar system. While they are working on this task, you can build the systems support structure. First, color the tongue depressors black and mark holes on the end of each stick.

Then, cross the tongue depressors over each other and drill a hole where they overlap. Place a fish-eyed hook in the middle of the center hole and fasten a chain. Once your kids finish painting their planets, drill a hole in the center of each sphere.

Finally, you will thread a string through each planet and tie it to a tongue depressor, allowing each sphere to hang from the structure. You can then mount this project on the ceiling and look up at your solar system.

If you want a more structured type of quick-build modeling experience, then you may like Airfix model kits, which are pre-constructed from plastic and can often be assembled without glue and are ready to paint - so these are ideal for younger children.

2. Make Homemade Playdough

Playdough is a fun material to build and explore with. Parents can add to the creativity of this activity by helping their kids make their own playdough. You will need flour, salt, water, oil, different colored Jell-O mixes and glitter for this activity.

You can start by mixing two and a half cups of flour with one cup of salt. Next, add a cup of water and half a cup of oil. Spoon portions of the mix into different cups and add colored Jell-O to each.

Finally, allow your little ones to add glitter to their colored dough if they desire. To prompt additional creative play, ask them to make their favorite shapes, characters and creatures out of their playdough.

3 Perform Acting Games

Writing and performing a play may be difficult and discouraging for some children. Acting games are less memory-dependent ways to perform and allow for independent creative expression. There are various acting games you can play with your little ones right from your living room.

A Million Ways To is a game that gets creative with casual activities. The parent chooses an everyday activity, like waking up or eating lunch, and asks their child to act it out in as many different ways as possible.   

Superstar Interview is another acting game that puts a kid’s performing abilities to the test. The child pretends to be a famous personality or celebrity in a fake interview. Parents can give the interview and see how long their little one can last without breaking character.

4 Build Instruments

Making music can be enjoyable and rewarding. Building your own instruments at home can up the antics and allow for an exploratory musical adventure.

You and your children can build guitars out of shoeboxes, paper towel tubes and rubber bands. First, you must cut a hole in the middle of the shoebox and stretch four rubber bands around its horizontal side. Then, hot glue the tube to one short side of the box at the guitar neck. Finally, you may provide your child with paint, stickers and glitter to customize their guitar. 

Little ones may also assemble coffee can drums at home. All you need is an empty coffee can and drumsticks, such as chopsticks or spoons, for this project. Turn the can over, so the metal end faces up, and start playing!

Create a Menu

Give your children agency when deciding what rainy-day activity to engage with. You can create a project menu for them to choose from when the weather restricts outside play. Deciding what activity to pursue promotes cerebral growth and confidence in children.