I know some of you parents will think this is crazy since you will be the one to do the laundry after a mud play but it can be really fun to play in the rain. Especially, in a tropical downpour! Your imagination knows no bounds in the kind of kid-friendly rain activities you can carve out for your family. Rain is around all year long in some places. This means the whole family take time off from their devices to participate in all these activities.
It’s so much fun to play in the rain if you’re lucky enough to live in a place that get a decent amount of rain a year. Some people think of it as a burden, to me it’s a blessing and by blessing, I mean it clears the air and keeps everything around you vibrant green for most part of the year. You may be fully clothed, in a rain gear on top of your clothes or in your swimmers in your yard, in your neighborhood park or anywhere in the woods or beach.
Some of these rain activities includes:
1. Make mud angels – It’s really fun not to worry about getting dirty by lying flat on your back in the mud to make a mud angel. The family can compete to see who makes the best mud angel. If you live right on the beach you will obviously be making sand angles.
2. Make mud tidal pool – Dam up a pool and open up a small section of the dam to let the water flow out. Then, float leaves in it and watch them moved away by the current from the dam you created.
3. See who will make the biggest slash in pools of water – Jump up and down in a pool of water to see who will make the biggest splash of water.
4. Botanizing with your kids in the rain – Fun to start the kids early in their life using Latin plant names. Invest some time as a parent in learning the Latin names of plants. You can look up or key out names of each plant on the Internet if you don’t know their common or scientific names when you get home.
4. Search for animals – Check for animals that love the rain like frogs, snails, slugs (Slugs are mollusks in the phylum Mollusca) or Ghost crabs and see if you can associate them with their scientific names when you get back home. For example, the scientific name of ghost crab is Ocypodinae and they are scavengers and predators of small animals.
5. See who in the family can make the best mud castle – Just like you make sand castle on the beach so can you make mud castle even though it may be a little tricky.
6. Rain gauge – Getting down to science of it all by making your very first rain gauge to figure out the amount of rainfall in a minute, an hour or in a day and compare it to your city’s rainfall record for that day. For your rain gauge you can simply use a cylinder fed through a funnel with a diameter of about 9 cm (3.5″). You can just put a tall container out in the rain with a diameter of about 9 cm (3.5″) and pour the rain collected in a beaker or measuring cup to note the amount of rain if you couldn’t make your rain gauge on time.
7. Make boats. Make boats out of fallen big tree leaves that you can float in a creek or gutter. If you make your boats out of paper, it’s best to take the paper back home with you or drop them in the trash receptacle. A way to be a good example to kids not to litter.
8. Rain Hike – Leisurely hike a trail in the rain taking your time….no hurrying up or running. You will notice natural beauty of the landscape that the rain brings; like all the greens are more vibrant and everything looks so much more beautiful.
9. Games – Play games in the rain like tags, relay races or drop and roll over in the mud.
10. Twirling with an umbrella – It’s so much fun twirling with an umbrella especially when done by kids. We adults (except dancers) have a higher center of gravity and tends to be harder for us than when done by kids. Nevertheless, it is definitely a great way to warm up and burn calories.
