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Rainy Day Fun & Boredom Busters for Kids
Quick and easy ideas to entertain your children!

RAIN THEME

CRAFTS

Mosaic Rainbows
Make a mosaic rainbow, use small squares of paper the colors of the rainbow. Draw a small arch on each child's paper. This will give them a guideline for the bottom color on the rainbow and they can keep adding the colors on. They glue on the squares , one color at a time.

Rainbows
• Paint rainbows with tempera, water colors, or markers
• Use eye droppers and let children drop various colors of water on coffee filters. Let dry. (Save up well-washed baby aspirin or vitamin droppers for this!)
• Sponge paint rainbows

Rainy Day Painting
If you can't beat it, join it!
What you'll need:  Paper plate (Chinet or other uncoated plate),  Food coloring ,  White crayon 
How to make it: 1. Sprinkle a few drops of food coloring on a paper plate. 
2. Get into rain gear and walk outdoors with the plate for about a minute and watch as artistic designs appear. 
3. Next, for a batik effect, try drawing a white crayon design on a new plate. Then add some food coloring and head out. 

Rainbow Necklaces
Fruit colored O-shaped cereal on a string and enjoy!.

Real Rainbows
Make rain by putting liquid water color in spray bottles and spraying paper outside.

ACTIVITIES & GAMES

A Walk in the Rain
Materials:  None
What to Do:  Sometime in March or April when rainy days are plentiful, make sure your Children bring raincoats and rubber boots so that you can go for a walk in the rain.  Find some good large shallow puddles to splash through just for the fun of it.  Watch the rain coming down.  Which way does it slant?  Is there a wind blowing the rain about?  Notice how the bark on trees and the walls on buildings change colours when wet.  Encourage the Children to touch the wet bark to feel the slight change in texture.  Look at the leaves clinging together and blades of grass bending.  See the raindrops glisten in the light.  Watch the rain splashing into puddles or other bodies of water.  Make little boats from leaves and watch as they twirl towards a storm sewer when placed in the water running by the curb.  Listen to the sounds in the rain.  What's that hiss?  Can you hear the water splashing off branches and roofs?  Listen for the swishing sound made by tires of passing cars.  Ask the Children to sniff the air.  Can they smell the dankness of the wet soil?  The fresh smell in the air? When you and your Children have had enough, return to the meeting hall to dry off and warm up with hot chocolate and a snack.  This is a good time to tell a story.  Start by talking about why rain is necessary for all living things.  Try to imagine a world without water.  As you talk, you can use a felt board to show the water cycle or to illustrate an imaginary dry world.  Let group members help you tell a story with the drawings.

Comparing Clouds
Look for clouds.  Observe shapes, color and changes as they move.  Let the kids compared to soft items such as cotton, snow, marshmallows, Candy cotton, or whipped cream.  Find reflections of clouds in puddles, or windows.  Draw clouds shapes and dirt or stand with Iraq or tweak, on a sidewalk with shock, if allowed, or paint cloud shapes on a sidewalk with brush dipped in water.  Ask the kids to speculate as to the kind of weather that will follow the clouds they observe.  Photographic clouds on a variety of days and record speculations of actual weather.  Which clouds bring fair weather?  Stormy weather?

Fort Building
This is great indoor activity that can last for hours and has allot of versatile.
What you'll need: Sheets - bigger the better, Chairs or dining room table
How to make it: Drape the sheet(s) over the table, letting it fall over the edge - no table? Use chairs! Hours of fun! The kids can have picnics, sleepovers, naps in their fort! Don't forget their playmate friends (sfuffed animals & figures). Great imagination play!

Rain Making 
Sit the kids in a circle. Practise the various rain sounds before doing the chant. If you wish, before starting this game, discuss the importance of rain for both farmers and other people. Leaves rustle before the rain starts (Rub thumbs against your first two fingers to make a rustling sound) The first raindrops start to patter down (Slowly rub together the palms of your hands) The rain is falling down hard and fast now (Cross your arms and rub your hands up and down your arms as if you are very cold) The rain drops are getting bigger (Pat your knees with your hands as fast as you can) Here comes the downpour! (Tap your feet on the floor quickly and lightly) When the shower has reached full force, reverse the order of the actions until the rain stops.

Rubber Boot Relay
Bring in some large rubber boots and coveralls. Form the kids into two lines, with the boots and coveralls at one end of the room, and the children at the other. On GO, the first kids run to the clothes and boots, put them on and run back to the line. There they take them off, give them to the next kid and go to the end of the line. The next kid puts on the clothes and boots, runs to the end of the room, takes them off, and runs back to the end of the line. The game continues until everyone has dressed up and run.

Rainy Day Fun
How do kids dress for going out in the rain.  Look for drops falling on walks, on dirt, on leaves and on grass.  I'll deserve drops bouncing on leaves.  Look for patterns of drops in puddles.  Let the kids feel raindrops on their face and catch drops on their tongues and taste.  Have the kids feel raindrops as they imitate animals; run like a deer, hop like a frog, grudge like a bunny, or flat arms like a bird.  Find a puddle.  Step in it to measure depth.  Is it as deep as it looks?  Where is the deep list?  What can be seen on the bottom?  What happens to the water as it is splashed?  Listen to splashing water.

Playing in Puddles
Look for a puddles following a rain.  Find twigs, leaves, rocks, bark or pinecones.  Or if things are too wet, bring a box of nature items from your inside collection.  Try various material as boats; a leaf raft and pinecones submarine or a bark sailboat with a twig mask, and a leaf sail.  How does it move?  What rocks, graphs, or dirt on the boat.  What happens?  Which materials float past?  Which moves the fastest?  Have the kids try to find insects floating in puddles on the leaves or twigs.

The Sounds of Streams and River 
Walk along a brook or River.  Listen for the sound of water as it runs over rocks, around fallen branches, and along the bank.  Take along a tape recorder to tape sound of the brook.  Weather permitting, go outside during a rainstorm.  Listen for rain drops in puddles.  Record the sounds of rain.  Look for flowing water in trains and gutters.  Record be sounds.  When many sounds of streams and rain have been collected, listen to your tape.  Have they kids try to identify the location by the water sound.  What other sounds did you hear?  Were they louder or softer than the water?  Note: good time to review water safety around Brooks and rivers.

Who Hides from the Rain?
Iranian day, walk with slickers and boots to look for birds, animals and insects in the rain.  Look under leaves, Bush is in rocks for insects.  Our and seen in the rain?  Put a drop of honey by Nast.  Will and count out in the rain to feed?  Are birds flying in the rain?  Do the kids to observe birds perched in shelters of trees and means?  If you can go outside as soon as a sudden shower is finished, look for animals coming out of dry shelters: lizard out from under rocks and buildings, dogs or cats out in the sunshine.  It is therefore wet?  Squirrels running along the ground, or bees and butterflies visiting flowers.  Have the beavers pretend to be an animal and tell what they would do when it rains.

SONGS

Rain, Rain Falling Down
Tune: Row, Row, Row, Your Boat
Rain Rain falling down
Falling on the ground
Pitter, patter,pitter, patter
What a splashy sound.

STORIES

How Rain Dances Started
This is a fable describing how rain dances started.
Once the sun, the moon, and the water lived on earth just as people do.  The sun kept the people warm, the moon lit their nights, and the water quenched their thirst.  But the people grew spoiled with this good life and chased them away -- the sun because it was too hot; the moon because it was too bright and kept them awake at night; and the water because it drenched their homes.  The earth became cold and cheerless.  The plants and animals began to die for lack of water.  Then the people turned to the Wise One, old Na-ma-ka-re-ne, for help. "What can we do?  We have no warmth, no water, and our children are dying!"  "Drum without pause until old man Rain hears you and sends water for your thirst," he told them.  So the people drummed and danced for days and days in their first rain dance, until drops of rain fell to moisten the earth again. Have the group make up their own rain dance with a blanket "puddle" as the focal point.  Use a bouncy cheerful tape and put some arm stretching and other exercises into your dance.