Fun Indoor Activities for Toddlers on Rainy Days

Rainy days can be a chance for little adventures for toddlers: splashing in puddles and feeling the rain on their faces is wonderful when you can go outside. But sometimes it’s just not possible, and that’s when simple indoor activities come to the rescue. With a little creativity, you can keep your toddler entertained, moving, and learning, all within the comfort of your home. These indoor activities are easy to set up, fun, and full of small sparks of discovery.

1. Backwards Day

What you need: Just your daily routine with a twist.
How to do it: Try wearing clothes backwards, having breakfast for lunch, or reading a book from the last page first.
Helps with: Sequencing and flexible thinking.

2. Pillow Planet Hopping

What you need: A few pillows or cushions.
How to do it: Scatter pillows around as planets. Give each planet an action, like jump, spin, clap, and let your toddler hop between them.
Helps with: Gross motor skills, balance, and following directions.

3. Rainbow Builders

What you need: Colorful scarves, ribbons, or blankets.
How to do it: Work together to lay the items on the floor in the shape of a rainbow. Then play a rainbow game: call out a color (“Purple!”) and let your toddler tap, step, or place a hand on that color. You can take turns calling colors.
Helps with: Color recognition, movement, and coordination.

4. Animal Costume Fashion Show

What you need: Simple clothing items like socks, belts, hats, or blankets.
How to do it: Help your toddler dress up as different animals and walk down a “runway,” moving and making sounds like their chosen animal.
Helps with: Animal movements and sounds, and imagination.

5. Kitchen Orchestra

What you need: Kitchen utensils like wooden spoons, pots, colanders, and safe items for making sounds. Paper and crayons if you’d like to make “concert tickets.”
How to do it: Invite your toddler to turn the kitchen into a mini orchestra. They can drum on pots for thunder, tap spoons for rain, or rustle paper for wind. To make it extra special, let them design concert tickets, hand them out to family members, and then perform their weather symphony together.
Helps with: Rhythm awareness and creativity.

6. Mystery Feel Game

What you need: A cardboard box or bag, plus household items with different textures, like a soft pillowcase, a smooth apple, or a bumpy pinecone.
How to do it: Place one item inside the box and let your toddler reach in without looking. Ask them to describe how it feels before guessing what the object is.
Helps with: Sensory awareness and descriptive language.

7. Shadow Theater

What you need: A flashlight and household objects.
How to do it: Shine the flashlight at the wall and make shadows with your hands or toys. Let your toddler guess, then create their own.
Helps with: Shape recognition and understanding of light.

8. Blanket Fort Town

What you need: A few blankets, pillows, and simple props like paper, crayons, or favorite toys.
How to do it: Build one fort with a blanket over two chairs or a small table, or set up several forts to make a little town. Each fort can become something different: a post office where toddlers deliver postcards, a bakery where they sell pretend cookies, or a book shop where they check out books. Your toddler can move between forts, visiting or running each spot.
Helps with: Imagination, role play, and understanding of community spaces.

9. Color Quest

What you need: A container in one color.
How to do it: Choose a color of the day and ask your toddler to collect only items of that color around the house, like red socks, red blocks, or red toy cars.
Helps with: Color recognition, sorting skills, and attention to detail.

10. Tape Town Roads

What you need: Masking tape and toy cars.
How to do it: Create simple roads, parking spots, or shapes on the floor. Your toddler can drive cars or walk along the lines.
Helps with: Spatial skills and direction-following.

11. Rainy Day Dance

What you need: Just a little space to move.
How to do it: Watch the rain outside together. Then let your toddler move like raindrops: tiptoe for light rain, stomp for heavy rain, sway for wind.
Helps with: Movement, rhythm, and emotional expression.

12. Feed the Number

What you need: Empty tissue boxes or small containers, and markers.
How to do it: Decorate each box with a friendly face and a big number on the front: 1, 2, 3. Your toddler’s job is to “feed” each friend the right number of items: one block for the “1” box, two socks for the “2” box, three toy cars for the “3” box. You can also give each box its own color, and ask your toddler to feed it items of that color only.
Helps with: Counting, and number and color recognition.