Seasonal Activities
What to do when it is pouring, freezing, boiling, or the holidays have four days left and everyone has run out of ideas.
Activities
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Scooping Out a Pumpkin
The insides are the best part. Scooping is a proper sensory activity, and the washed seeds do a week of counting afterwards.
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Collect the Leaves, Then Sort Them
A bag, a walk, and a kitchen table. The collecting is half of it and the sorting is the other half.
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Printing Your Own Wrapping Paper
A halved potato, a shape cut into it, and a roll of plain paper. It looks far better than it has any right to.
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Painting With Water
A bucket of water and a big brush. They paint the wall, the fence and the path, it dries, and they do it again. No mess at all.
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Rescue the Frozen Toys
Freeze small toys in a tub of water overnight, then hand over warm water, salt and a spoon. It buys a genuinely quiet hour.
Browse seasonal activities
Seasons change what is possible more than anything else. In July you want a reason to be outside and slightly wet; in January you want something that works in a small room without breaking anything.
These pages follow the year — the weather, the school holidays and the handful of celebrations most families mark — so the ideas suit the week you are actually in.
What you'll find here
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Rainy days
Indoor activities with enough going on to survive a whole afternoon, including a few that use up energy without needing a garden.
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Summer and outdoors
Water play, garden science and messy things that are much easier to clear up when they happen outside.
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Holidays and celebrations
Making, decorating and giving — the kind of thing that fills an afternoon and produces something worth keeping.
Bookmark the season you are in — these pages are updated as the year moves rather than replaced.