We know exercise and play are essential for helping a preschooler learn and develop during hours away from school, but what about all those winter days when the family is stuck in the house? When the colds, the storms and the holidays come, and when there are no plans? An occasional hour spent in front of the TV or watching a familiar video isn’t a bad thing, but parents of young children need a strategy for those days spent indoors. Here are some ideas to stimulate young imaginations, get a lot of activity in, and maybe even carry over into their own projects the following day.

1. Give a play. Start with a short, simple story — you may have to provide it yourself, from a recent family trip, from a fairy tale, from a movie or even neighborhood happenings. Give it a fun title. How about “The Toad that Got Away” or” The Mysterious Stranger”? Then you’ll need props — old clothes to use as costumes and perhaps a box of things like old sheets, unwanted unbreakable dishes, pots and vases, twigs and dusters (clean), stockings to be stuffed and used as swords. Fill the story with love, magic, fear, courage, good guys and bad guys, and let them act out the scenes. Everyone of whatever age does something in a play. Someone can make and distribute tickets to an audience of older children, parents and neighbors. Someone can do sound effects or manage the curtain. The only rule is to have fun.

2. Have an old mattress day. Clear a space in any room, lay an unwanted mattress or futon on the floor and let the batteries run in your little bunny. The wear and tear is mostly on the mattress and not on the rest of the house. Living in a small space with no unwanted mattress? Push together all the pillows and/or cushions in the house.

3. Don’t wait for bath time to have water play. Fill up the tub any time — and your child will have all the more fun when the usual schedule is broken.

4. Have your own gym class. You don’t have to be athletic yourself to turn on the music and watch them practice doing what they see grownups do on exercise videos. Clap for them. Preschoolers are usually pretty enthusiastic and funny. Maybe everyone gets a tiny prize.

5. Play a marching song. This is the easiest activity. Anything with a good rousing beat will do as you march. Play or sing a popular bouncy song and dance. Play a slow song and be elephants or sleepy
hippopotami. And so on.



Mary L. Cox Golden., is a retired child psychologist and grandmother of nine who volunteers at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk.