"It's Raining and I'm Bored!" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Treasure hunt

Preparing a treasure hunt can take imagination and creativity. You can even prepare ahead of time, so when it's a rainy day, you will be ready. First you will need to decide on the treasure. It could be a simple prize like a Pez dispenser, which you may have bought ahead of time, just for days like this. You will need to make notes with clues as to where to find the next note and so on. Eventually, the final note will lead the child to the treasure. If you have more than one child, you can create treasure hunts for each of them. Once the children are finished their snacks have them wait in one bedroom while you hide the notes in the correct order. Tell them you are setting up a treasure hunt for them, so they will be patient while you do that. You can set up more than one hunt at a time, so that the children are hunting at the same time too.

Answer: Hokey Pokey

The Hokey Pokey (aka Hookey Pookey) is a fun singing and action game. Children stand in a circle and do the actions of the song. These actions include things like putting their left hand into the circle, taking it out, putting it in again and then shaking it all about. Next they do the Hokey Pokey (wiggle about) and then they turn themselves around. "That's what it's all about!"

Answer: Charades

Charades is great for children to play. You can also prepare well in advance for this by creating different cards with various different items, names of television programs or anything that can be acted out. The child who is "It" picks a card from a hat and then holds up the number of fingers in correspondence to the number of words on the card.

For example, if the card says: Action: "riding a bike", the child will say "Action" and hold up three fingers. The child who is "It" can say "all words" so that the others will know "It" is going to act out the complete sequence of words at the same time.

The first child to guess right will be "It" next.

Answer: Plasticine

Plasticine (aka modeling clay) can be molded into all sorts of animal shapes and sizes. Get out some old shoe boxes and gift boxes of various sizes. (You can buy assorted boxes at the local dollar store.) You will use them later.
Have the children settle in and start creating animals with the plasticine. While they are creating their animals, you can cut out "bars" in the boxes, which will become cages. Have the children set up the boxes for their zoo. You can color code the boxes, for example: three children, make two yellow boxes, two green and two red. This will prevent the children from arguing over the cages. They will be assigned their own color.
The children can then play zoo. Let their imaginations run "wild" as animals stroll through the zoo to visit one another.

Answer: Food art

Food art is a craft that is plenty of fun! Have the children sit at the table. You can then place bowls in the middle of the table. Fill each with a different food item, like cheerios, macaroni, rice, shreddies etc. Give each of the children a sheet of construction paper in their favorite color, a glue stick and a pencil crayon for drawing lines, if need be. The children can create a food masterpiece, if they don't eat all the foods first!

Answer: Make masks

Gather some clean paper plates and popsicle sticks or straws. Cut out eye holes in the plates and then let the children draw whatever they want to onto the paper plates with crayons or markers. You can also give the children glitter to glue on, or ribbons, anything of that nature. Once they are done, tape a popsicle stick or a straw to the bottom of the mask, for a handle. Each child can then become their creation holding their mask in front of their face as they play and pretend to be what they made.

Answer: Toss cards into the hat

This is a great game where the children can take turns. Place the hat upside down on the floor. Mark a standing spot for the kids to stand when it's their turn. Each child tosses the cards, one by one, trying to get as many as they can into the hat.

After each turn they count how many cards have landed into the hat. Whichever child gets the most cards into the hat wins and goes first the next time.

Answer: Cards

Have the children sit on a carpet and give them each a deck of cards. The children can build card castles or towers by leaning two cards against each other, slanted in opposite directions so that they balance well making an upside down "V". They can place a few of these upside down "V's" of cards side by side and then carefully place cards on top of the points to make a flat area on which they will place more cards in the upside down "V".

The children can gradually work their way up to see which child can make the tallest castle or tower.

Answer: Pads of paper, pencils, erasers

To keep your children entertained, "Cartoon Strip" is a good way to do that. Give each child a small pad of paper that is fairly thick. They will also need a pencil and an eraser. Starting at the bottom page of the pad of paper, have them draw a stick figure of a person or animal or anything they want to draw.

They will have to redraw the same stick person or object on each page, changing the position just a little bit each time. Once complete, the children can fan the pages with their thumb and watch what they have drawn become animated as the pages turn.

Answer: Paper bags

Paper lunch bags are ideal for creating puppets from. You will need glue sticks, crayons, markers, glitter, ribbon, buttons, wool scraps or anything of that nature. Have the children draw a face onto their paper bags and then decorate the bags with button eyes, wool hair or any combination of items that are at their disposal to create with.

The children can then put on a puppet show for each other. Pull the sofa out from the wall, so the one putting on the show can hide behind the sofa and have their puppets visible to their audience. Encourage the children to share puppets for the purpose of the shows. Let the children take turns putting on a show for the others.