Some weeks the rain can be endless and our pre-k kiddos start getting cabin fever from being stuck indoors all day. Don’t let bad weather stop you from having fun with your kids! This list provides you with 30 different activities for toddlers! Most of them are indoor activities, but we added in a few outdoor ones for those of you who are adventurous! Keep kids busy with arts and crafts, science experiments, and other amazing activities!
1. Use the Rain to Make Art!
For this simple project, all you need is some watercolors and paper. Have children paint colored dots or other shapes, then put them outside on a rainy day and let the rain do its work!
Learn more: Nurture Store
2. Practice Essential Schoolwork Skills
Rainy Day activity for preschoolers pack has a ton of different academic printables. Review skills in phonics, handwriting skills, and math!
Learn more: This Reading Mama
3. Conduct a Science Experiment
Who doesn’t love science experiments?! Even littles can get into this water cycle experiment. Gather some household items and create a “sponge cloud” to mimic the rain cycle indoors!
Learn more: Little Bins for Little Hands
4. Make Oobleck
Another fun science experiment, that kids love is making Oobleck! Use Dr. Seuss’ book Bartholomew and the Oobleck as a read-aloud to pair the experiment!
Learn more: Instructables
5. Read “If You Give a Pig a Pancake”
This is a kid-favorite book – “If You Give A Pig a Pancake” by Laura Numeroff. Read the book and then learn some life skills by having children make their own pancakes and practice using the letter ‘P’.
Learn more: Mom Life Made Easy
6. Letter Tracing Activity
Work on those fine motor skills with this letter tracing activity. Each letter is printed onto a rain boot and laminated so kids can reuse them to practice letter formation over and over!
Learn more: Preschool Play and Learn
7. Make Rain Sticks
Listening to the rain is relaxing. Get crafty on a rainy day with these adorable rain sticks! Break out some stickers, glitter, or whatever arts and crafts materials you have around the house and get decorating! Afterward, learn more about traditional rain sticks.
Learn more: Happy Hooligans
8. Conduct a Play with Stuffed Animals
Help teach empathy and executive functioning skills with stuffed animals. This adorable idea is a dramatic play activity using stuffed animals that live in a shelter. Kids can take care of the animals, feed them, play vet, and get them adopted!
Learn more: Early Learning Ideas
9. Make Rain Cloud Art!
Using some cotton balls, watercolor, glue, and pipettes, pipe glue the mixture onto pieces of paper that are on a leaning tray. Then glue “clouds” to the top!
Learn more: Gift of Curiosity
10. Animal Movement Game
Animal movement activity dice games are lots of fun for all ages! Gets kids to move and be silly by rolling dice with different animals on each side. Whatever animal it lands on, they need to act it out! Make sure to set some activity ground rules though, as this activity can get WILD!
Learn more: Craftulate
11. Indoor Scavenger Hunt
All kids love a good scavenger hunt! These indoor scavenger hunts are developmentally appropriate for preschool students. It is an alphabet activity where you place out letter cards and then kids must go throughout the class/house to find objects that begin with each letter. It’s also a great way to practice letter sounds!
Learn more: Kids Activities
12. Make a Raindrop Suncatcher
Refine those motor skills AND make art! This creative idea uses sharpened crayon prices to make a raindrop suncatcher! Students will strengthen their fine motor skills by peeling and sharpening the crayons.
Learn more: Pre-K Pages
13. Practice Letter Identification
Practice letter identification with these ABC Hunt worksheets! Each printable has the letter clouds in upper and lower case. Children need to find the corresponding raindrops.
Learn more: Preschool Play and Learn
14. Read Books
Reading is a wonderful activity for rainy days! This list of books for kids includes 25 favorite reads! Unsure which to read? It also gives you a short snippet about each book so you can pick something your child likes – poems or rhyming, or maybe a song?
Learn more: Book Nerd Mom
15. Rainbow Cloud Craft
This cloud rainbow is a beautiful craft to make with kids! Used dyed pasta, a paper plate, and some cotton for this rainy day activity! While making it, you can teach about clouds and rainbows. An added bonus, it helps with fine motor control!
Learn more: Lille Punkin’
16. Sensory Play
Some good activities for kids stuck inside are sensory play-related! Learn through the sense of touch with this cute cloud sensory board. Create clouds with cotton, rain with blue stones or colored rice, and lightning with pipe cleaners.
Learn more: Taming Little Monsters
17. Play Indoor Games
Need to burn off some of that pent-up energy? These activities with toddlers are sure to do the trick! Get little ones moving by playing some indoor games like walking on pillows, sock toss, and creating an obstacle course. The site has numerous activities to keep them busy all day!
Learn more: How We Learn
18. Mimic the Rain
Mimic the rainy weather with this science and sensory activity. Kids will have fun pouring, scooping, and squeezing (which is great for motor skills) while playing with this rain sensory bin.
Learn more: Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds
19. Learn and Play with Lego Building Activities
This resource contains 100 different ideas for building projects. Examples are making letter shapes, building a ring toss board, and creating a race track for toy cars.
Learn more: Darcy and Brian
20. Rubberband Painting
This type of activity can be a little messy, but it’s so much fun! Using a cookie sheet, rubberbands, and some paint, kids will create their own masterpiece. Band splatter painting helps to strengthen fingers and allows an artistic outlet. Try having them mix colors or pulling the bands in different ways to see the effects.
Learn more: Reading Confetti
21. Balloon Games
Use this balloon taps game to work on listening skills and impulse control. All you need are some different color balloons. You will then make teams and only the team you call should be tapping. You can also use the different colors to give other directives such as, “No tapping the red balloons” or “Only team 1 can tape the blue balloons”.
Learn more: Counselor Keri
22. Matching Games
If you are looking for an easy activity, this matching game is great! for this example, they use kitchen objects traced on butcher paper, but you can change it up. Trace and match items that you are teaching about. For example, maybe they are learning about fruits and veggies or different modes of transportation.
Learn more: Days with Grey
23. Make Rainbow Pasta
All kids love this rainbow pasta! Not only is it fun to eat, but it is great as a sensory toy…and it’s safe to eat so you don’t need to worry about them ingesting any of it. Simply cook any shape of pasta then add it to zip baggies with food dye and mush it around. After, rinse the extra dye off, and walla!
Learn more: Kids Activities
24. Make Moon Paint Bombs
This is a cool activity to do on a rainy day because you can go outside and use them in the rain! Make paint bombs with powered paint stuffed into tissue paper. Then go outside and “bomb” the sidewalk! The rain will make beautiful art with the colors!
Learn more: Neverland Darling
25. Mini Boat Race
Put on their raincoats and boots and get kids outside! Make these little walnut boats race in the rainwater! If you prefer to stay inside, you can also have a floating contest in the tub!
Learn more: Red Ted Art
26. Make Edible Playdough
Do you know what’s better than playdough? Playdough you can eat! Toddlers will love not only getting to make cool dough creations but also getting a tasty snack after (or while) they play!
Learn more: Rainy Day Mum
27. Watch a Video
Too much screen time can be bad for growing brains, so make it meaningful! Try Cosmic Yoga on YouTube. Kids will learn about mindfulness and tips for relaxing. They still get an opportunity to be online, but with purpose!
Learn more: Cosmic Kids Yoga
28. Waterproof a Boat
This is a cool experiment to teach kids about water resistance. Kids will color a paper boot, then cover the boot with different materials to see which is waterproof! Have them make predictions on which material they think will work best! It is an easy and fun experiment that uses critical thinking skills.
Learn more: Science Sparks
29. Make Magic Rain!
Using a white crayon on white construction paper, have students draw raindrops. Next using watercolors, have them paint over the page – the rain will “magically” appear!
Learn more: The Educators’ Spin on It
30. Board Games
If the rain seems like it won’t stop and you are running out of ideas, board games are always a win! This site has a list of different indoor games to play with pre-k. There is pancake pileup, brownie match, bears and bowls, and more!
Learn more: Teaching Expertise
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