Playing With Words 365

Educating, inspiring, and empowering parents & professionals in supporting young children's overall development

  • Home
  • About
    • About Katie
      • Credentials, Training and Philosophy
      • How I Got Here
    • About This Blog
  • Blog
  • Child Development
    • Speech & Language Development from Birth to Five
    • Speech and Language 101
    • Toy Recommendations for Speech & Language Development
    • Sign Language 101
  • Speech Therapy
    • How to Help Your Child Talk
    • What You Can Expect From Speech Therapy {A Guide for Parents}
    • How to find an SLP
    • Speech Therapy Tips & Activities
    • Materials & Product Recommendations
    • SLP Forms, Charts, and Data Sheets
    • How To Elicit {Teach} Speech Sounds Series
    • Freebies!
  • Resources
    • for Parents & Caregivers
    • for SLPs
  • About My Life (Blog)

One of Our Favorite “Toys” on a Rainy Day

March 26, 2012 by Katie Filed Under: Parenting, Play, Toys and Language Learning 6 Comments

All of a sudden…it’s raining. After a very dry winter, spring has finally brought us rain! I actually LOVE LOVE LOVE rain. I always have. I am an odd one who gets all excited when I wake up to clouds and gloom.

Except that this time the rain has come and  ruined our plans two weekends in a row.

Sigh.

Last weekend we made use of the rain and got a TON of spring cleaning done around the house (did you know that spring cleaning can be a great time to work on language skills? I’ll posting about that soon…). However we needed to set the kids up with some activities while we did some work that they couldn’t help us with..and that was when I remembered one of our most FAVORITE play items that we had stored in the garage.

My mom and dad got this for my daughter for her first birthday and we had it set up in our living room pretty much all the time for a whole year! It is similar to the Playhut Lil Explorers Megaland Jungle but ours is a little more simple.

We set it up for the kids and they had a BLAST playing in it. Then we put it away and enjoyed several days of sunshine and then BOOM! Rain again. So….up it went again!

Why do we love this? Because it keeps our kids out of our hair so we can watch a movie in peace entertained and provides opportunity for pretend play and learning as well as works on gross motor skills. Yeah, that’s it. 😉

I also love that the whole thing folds up and fits in a bag that you can store away for later. You could also set it up outside on a nice day! And because it has several different parts, you can set it up in several different ways and you can choose to use only some of the parts and store the others (depending on your available space). It comes with a bunch of the little plastic balls to you can make a ball pit…however our dog has eaten many of them so we don’t get them out much.

For a long time we also had our Step 2 slide in the house. Don’t be afraid to bring some of the indoor toys inside during the rainy/snowy season! I recently read a blog where they brought their sand/water table inside and filled it with colored rice to play with! how fun would that be?

What is your favorite indoor toy or activity? Tomorrow I am going to share another fun indoor activity that is GREAT for working on speech and language skills!

Cheers!

About Katie

Katie is a licensed, credentialed and certified pediatric speech-language pathologist and mom to four (8, 6, 3 and 6 months). Her passion for educating, inspiring and empowering parents of children with all abilities led her to start her blog playing with words 365 where she shares information about speech & language development & intervention strategies, parenting, photography and a little about her family life too. Katie has been working in the field of speech pathology for 12 years and is certified in The Hanen Centre’s It Takes Two to Talk ® and Target Word ® programs and holds a certificate in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). In addition to blogging and being a mommy, Katie works part time in her small private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

Comments

  1. Misty says

    December 6, 2012 at 6:01 am

    We got my son a pop up tunnel for Christmas. I can’t wait to set up for rainy days!

    Reply
    • Katie says

      December 6, 2012 at 4:08 pm

      You’ll LOVE it!

      Reply
  2. Lara says

    May 30, 2013 at 11:41 am

    Hi! Am I missing the link to the product? I’d love to buy this for my little one!

    Reply
    • Katie says

      May 30, 2013 at 2:55 pm

      Just added a link!

      Reply
      • Lara says

        June 6, 2013 at 2:10 pm

        Thank you! Love your blog!
        Lara recently posted..How I (Maybe) Flipped My Breech BabyMy Profile

        Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Thrifty Thursday #17 says:
    March 28, 2012 at 3:34 pm

    […] how to make colored rice…something I have always wanted to do and actually mentioned in my post on Monday! Check it […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badgeShow more posts

Looking for something?

Popular Posts

  • Top 10 Summer Top 10 Summer Activities to Encourage Your Toddler’s Speech Development {A Summer Challenge}
  • Feed Clover Collage Freebie Friday: FEED The Old Lady Who Swallowed the Clover
  • How to Elicit the k&g sounds How to Elicit (Teach) the K & G Sounds {Part One: Elicitation Techniques}
  • My Tricks to Teaching the R Sound My Tricks to Teaching the /r/ Sound
  • The Night Before St The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day: Make a Leprechaun Trap!
  • Five Playful Ways to Work on Listening and Following Directions
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Child Development
  • Speech Therapy
  • Resources
  • About My Life (Blog)

Copyright © 2023 · Swank WordPress Theme By, PDCD