Rhonda's List: Things To Do With Children
Things To Do At Home -- Indoors
Make playdough and play with it and some toys (rollers, cutters, cookie cutters, garlic press, etc)
Make pretzel playdough, play, form, bake, eat
Put large butcher paper across the floor, strip kids to diapers, and paint with brushes, potato mashers, etc
Puzzles
Treasure hunt
Block play
Color, or create pictures with stickers
Hide and seek
Make books out of construction paper, have children color pictures and dictate words to adults
Make and play with musical instruments
Take a large bucket and fill it with beans, or rice, or kitty litter, or sand, or packing peanuts and let children play with it with their hands, scoops, spoons, buckets, shovels, and so on
Build forts with blankets and pillows
Read stories, act out stories
Arts and crafts -- buy plastic hats or white shirts or anything and have children decorate it. Check out crafts stores such as Michaels for ideas.
Creative movement: Dance with scarves to music; make specific shapes with your body; create a large shape with several bodies, photograph it, and show it to the children; act out a song, fingerplay, or story.
Build a gingerbread house (there are instructions in books or on the web, or there are kits available)
(To do: Age ranges for each. Recipes for playdough and pretzel playdough.)