Ideas for Rainy Day Babysitting

Bring a Craft Box

• Fill a box with glue, scissors, construction paper, buttons, stickers, stamps, twine, charms, tin foil, yarn, paints and other craft items. Your possibilities are limited only by your and the kids' creativity. Ask the parents about using everyday items around the house for crafts, too.

  Potatoes cut in half with shapes cut into them from cookie cutters make good stamps. Old socks can be transformed into sock puppets. See the Resources section for some ideas of simple kids' crafts to make.

Play Hide and Seek or Sardines

• Hide and Seek, and its equal and opposite counterpart, Sardines, can be indoor or outdoor games. Sardines, in fact, might be the more ideal inside "rainy day" game of the two. While Hide and Seek finds one person searching for all of the others who have hidden, in Sardines children choose one player to hide and all of the rest will have to find, and then sneak into the hiding place with the chosen player. Several kids hiding together in a small, cramped space spells fun.

Have a Treasure Hunt

• You can use any theme or idea for an indoor treasure hunt, but try to take advantage of things that are native to the indoors. Name a letter of the alphabet and ask kids to find all of the things in the house beginning with that letter. Come up with some riddles and clues that are general enough to use on a rainy day at any house.

Put on a Talent Show

• Prepare a talent show that the kids can show their parents when they return. Take advantage of things the kids are good at, like playing instruments, putting on a puppet show or dancing. Choose costumes, have rehearsals and write programs.

Play Board Games

• Bring your own old board games that the kids might not know, or learn a new one that they all love. Teach them different card games or switch board games if the kids are restless.