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Is winter here, is very cold outside, usually raining, windy and snowing. Also it gets dark at 16.00h. I tried to go outside but decided is not good as there are no kids outside, empty parks and he got sick when we went outside. I have no car to drive him somewhere. What are good activities to do inside home together with 3 year old kid?
Are there any kid TV shows that he likes to watch? If so, you could sit with him and watch together. Also, you could read to him. Does he like music? If so, you could teach him some nursery rhyme songs.
Read, paint, draw, cook, tv as a last resort. Sing, make music together. Play with his toys with him. Lots of things you can do with a three year old.
They are sponges at that age. Make up stories together. My 3 year old granddaughter is always making up stories. She loves to hear made up stories with her as the main character, lol.
Make indoor tent forts. Painting/coloring. Play doh, entry-level legos (Duplo), coloring on cardboard boxes, making cardboard box houses if big enough.
TV/Device/Screen time as a last resort. Don't get carried away with this however.
Wow, do I have experience with this! I work for a school district, so I spend Christmas break every winter with my grandsons (now 10 and 7), but I remember what I did with oldest when he was three...and during the Covid lockdown that happened during late winter/early spring when youngest was three. We came up with a lot of fun ideas for playing
inside.
Lincoln logs. We played with them for hours. I had a set from when I was a kid, which I expanded from yard sales until we had a whole bin full...enough to build an entire village.
Thomas the Tank railroad...the battery operated trains, tracks and accessories the both of them always got for Christmas and birthdays were added to with a lot of pieces (like the airport, quarry and shake shake bridge) from yard sales. We had enough track to build the whole Island of Sodor.
DD (their mom) still had a bin filled with toy food and dishes from her childhood. Oldest grandson was given a "Melissa and Doug" toy birthday cake for his third birthday. We'd get it out and add DD's old toy dishes, plastic toy ice cream scoops, etc. and we'd have a birthday party for "Whale", his favorite stuffed animal. I bought a set of cheap party hats at the Dollar Store to use at the "party". "Whale" had a birthday party EVERY DAY. His little brother still played with the toy food at that age, except he liked to play "restaurant".
Board games like Candy Land, Connect Four, card memory match. Jigsaw puzzles of the United States (they learned all the states and capitals) and the solar system (ditto the planets).
Toy doctor kit...youngest grandson had one of these. We'd play "hospital" with all the stuffed animal "patients".
And let them pick out books to read aloud. Kids love that.
Writing this made me sad...I miss those fun times when grandsons were little.
Last edited by Mrs. Skeffington; 12-21-2023 at 03:34 AM..
Going outside doesn't make people sick - it is coming into contact with other people who have viruses that makes kids sick.
You really need to bundle up and get outside to play outside twice a day with him. If it is not raining out, you go outside with him! From your writing, I suspect that you were raised in a warm climate, but really, it is very possible to play outside in cold weather. And if it has snowed, it is especially fun to play outside in the snow!
Going outside doesn't make people sick - it is coming into contact with other people who have viruses that makes kids sick.
You really need to bundle up and get outside to play outside twice a day with him. If it is not raining out, you go outside with him! From your writing, I suspect that you were raised in a warm climate, but really, it is very possible to play outside in cold weather. And if it has snowed, it is especially fun to play outside in the snow!
This ^^^ - where I live (also overseas, in a cold country) people go for a walk with their kids every day - rain or shine (except heavy rain or heavy wind, but some have no choice), no matter how cold. They need sunshine to produce Vitamin D (it is possible to get the UVB radiation needed for the skin to synthesize vitamin D even when skies are cloudy and gray), they need exercise (walking, jumping, running), spending time outdoors boost immune system.
Kids love snow and to play with it!
Make indoor tent forts. Painting/coloring. Play doh, entry-level legos (Duplo), coloring on cardboard boxes, making cardboard box houses if big enough.
TV/Device/Screen time as a last resort. Don't get carried away with this however.
Just what I was going to suggest! lol Tent forts are something that can amuse kids into early gradeschool years. Also: pillow forts, if you have large pillows, or don't mind occasionally using upholstery cushions from your couch or living room chairs.
3-year-olds are very easy to entertain, OP. You can play with stuffed animals, making up stories for the animals to act out. As the child gets older (age 4), you can ask them to make up their own stories while you follow along. This will teach them to entertain themselves, when you're busy. This is a key skill for that age.
You can get stuffed animal puppets (you can find beautiful ones in a wide variety of animals at zoos and museum shops. The child can expand their knowledge of animals that way). You can make forts out of large appliance cardboard boxes, if you have any around. Reading children's storybooks. Hide-and-seek games, where you hide one of the stuffed animals, and the child has to try to find it.(At 3, you need to make this pretty easy to solve.)
You could do educational activities, like get a book of animal illustrations, possibly with some text on each animal, and you can read to the child about each one, and they can learn what they look like. On another day, you can quiz them gently on the animals covered previously. Look up the World Wildlife Fund and National Geographic sites to see what they offer along this line. At age 4, you could get a simple wild animal coloring book, to continue the education. At that age, or at 5, he could probably begin to understand basic information about what habitat each animal lives in.
I have a 3 year old and I live in Chicago so I feel ya!
Here are some things we do to kill time:
Go to the library (ours always has random events like guest readers or parties)
We rent audio books and she listens to the book via headphones
We have an indoor splash pad by us, so we go to that on occasion
Have a slumber party in the basement. Blanket and pillows on the floor and a new movie on TV to watch
Random activities like building a ginger bread house or doing paper crafts
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