As parts of America experienced one of the heaviest snowfalls in years thanks to the Polar Vortex, many families have found themselves snowed in with baby. While the snow may be beautiful to look at, it’s not exactly great to venture out in; particularly if you have a baby.
If being stuck indoors with baby is making you go a little stir crazy, here you’ll discover some great snow day activities to keep you busy.
Bring The Winter Wonderland Indoors
You may be trying to escape the snow but bringing a little indoors can be great fun for you and baby. It introduces them to a new texture, as well as temperatures. Babies love to explore anything new, but there is a possibility they may not like the snow. Therefore, bringing just a little indoors is a great way to test their response.
Place a little snow in a plastic container and let baby touch and feel it. They may love the new experience, letting the snow slide around in their hands. However, you will need to watch that their little hands don’t get too cold! A good idea would be to give them a small scoop to use, rather than their fingers.
Enjoy An Indoor Beach Day
If you really want to escape from the cold weather, why not enjoy an indoor beach day? Stick the heating on and create a make-shift sandpit for you and baby to play with. You can even place a beach towel underneath the sandpit to catch any potential sand accidents. Go all out and put on some summer tunes to fully distract you against the cold outside.
Once it’s nice and toasty indoors, you could also dress baby up in beachwear and take some photos. What better way to forget about the snow and freezing cold temperatures than by creating your own little indoor beach?
Snow Day Activities
If you have a toddler, crafts are one of the best ways to keep them entertained. However, babies are a little too young to get too involved with snow-day themed crafts. So, instead, why not come up with fun snow day activities?
Sensory play tends to be one of the best indoor activities for babies. Exploring the different textures, sounds and feels keeps baby entertained, while also aiding in their development. There are lots of sensory play ideas you can find if you do a quick search online.
Another snow day activity you can try out is a puppet show. If you don’t have spare puppets lying around, why not try out a shadow puppet show? Grab a flashlight, turn down the lights and delight your baby with fun shadow puppets. Again, if you’re unsure how to create shadow puppets with your hands, you’ll find a lot of ideas online.
Bubble Baths
What better way to forget about the cold weather than to treat baby to a nice warm bubble bath? The key here is to have lots of bubbles. Throw in some fun baby bath toys and place something down around the bath to catch any splashes and spills. That way, baby can splash around until their heart is content without you having to worry about cleaning up the mess.
Create Your Own Band
If there’s one thing babies love to do, it’s make noise – a lot of it! So, why not create your own little band? You can use practically anything to create noise including saucepans and wooden spoons. If you do have some instruments lying around you can grab them too.
Start by making music for your baby. They’ll love listening to the noise you’re creating, clapping and dancing along. Then, you can show them how it’s done. Let them have a go at banging the saucepans with the wooden spoon. They may not be able to play along to a full song, but they’ll have a lot of fun randomly hitting the saucepan!
Sledding Fun
You may not want to venture out too much, but getting outdoors even for just 15-20 minutes, can really stop you from going stir crazy. It also gives you a chance to properly introduce baby to the snow.
If you have a big enough yard, you can sled there. If not, take a short walk to the nearest slope and show baby just how fun sledding can be. You may even find you enjoy it more than you thought you would too. Just remember to stick to small slopes – baby won’t be quite ready to tackle the big ones just yet!
Create A Baby Maze
Another great idea is to create an indoor baby maze. Use sofa cushions and anything around the house you can use as walls and barriers. Then, help baby navigate their way through. Not only will this help to pass the time, but it will also make baby use basic problem-solving skills, aiding in their development.
You could also throw blankets over the sofa cushions to create a little fort. You and baby can play in the fort, making it more fun by adding glow in the dark toys.
Catch Up On Laundry
OK, so this one may not sound like fun, but you may be surprised! If you’ve got a mountain of laundry to catch up on, you can take advantage of the bad weather and get baby involved (well, sort of!). Place baby down next to a pile of clean laundry. They can then help you to fold them. Or, more accurately, they can play with the clean laundry while you gradually put it away.
Conclusion
As you can see, there’s lots of ways to keep you and baby entertained on snow days. No matter how much time you’re looking to kill, there’s an idea above you can take advantage of. You could even get out in the snow and build a little snowman for baby to look at. It may not be much fun being stuck indoors with baby, but there are lots of ways to liven it up.
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