Active play is important for children, raising two kids in a small house can make it challenging on rainy days when going outside isn’t a practical thing. Yesterday was one of those rainy type of days where we stayed inside and played.

Something we do every day is dance, the best thing about dancing is that it’s free essentially we don’t have to buy anything I just put on music and dance with my daughter’s. We often hold hands and dance around in a circle, as my daughter’s laugh. I often play education songs in the background during dance time.

Here are a few of the songs we listen to often…

See it Say it Sign It
Welcome to the Zoo Count by 1’s
Going on a Bear Hunt

We make obstacle courses out of stepping stones and wiggle seats. In which I’m able to combine a physical activity in with a simple color practice by my oldest saying the colors out loud teaching her youngest sister color words.

My daughter’s and I play fishes and shark. In which we lay on our bellies on a the slippery blanket and have to wiggle away from each other. The rules according to my oldest is that a person gets a power up and it allows them to jump out of the water and run away from the shark. The power up option is for her whenever she chooses according to her game rules.

Besides physical activities we also incorporate some sort of art practice within our day. As I mentioned earlier yesterday was a rainy day, therefore we kept it fun and simple, by bringing out body paint and drawing on ourselves and each other.

Today my daughters helped me with household chores.

When we finished with our chores my oldest asked if we could count that as our exercise for the day because she said it was hard work. The great thing about my kids helping me clean is that it keeps them busy allowing me to actually clean the couches and get the floors cleaned, and it doubles as a physical activity.

I had told her yes that we’d count that as our exercise for the day because I knew she had a dentist appointment late in the afternoon, and she also had a reading lesson on the list for the day. After her dentist appointment my daughter’s played with Play-Doh shortly after that it was my youngest daughter’s bedtime.

These are great items to incorporate active play in a home with limited space like mine. My youngest loves the small slide sport activity center. My husband and I bought it around the time she turned 9 months old to get her to move and climb more. As her physical therapist had determined she was showing a slight motor delay for her age at that time. It definitely helped. Now she’s right on track where she should be for her age. Although she’s able to climb the taller slide we have and go down on her own, I often bring it out when she’s acting really hyper to use as a safe alternative to the bigger slide. When she gets real hyper and tells me no to helping her I’m always nervous she’ll fall off the bigger slide. Not that it’s a large drop, its still enough to raise concern, making the smaller slide a safer play option.

The body paint is something I bring out on days I don’t feel like thinking of a craft activity. Therefore I bring out the body paint and we color ourselves and each other, free drawing whatever we feel like. Allowing me to incorporate art in a fun easy non-plan ahead sort of way.

Listed above are some of the cleaning toys my daughter’s have that they love to play with and use to clean along side with me.
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