You’ve checked the weather app three times. It’s still raining. The kids are bored, you’ve already watched more television than you’d planned and somebody has asked “what are we doing today?” approximately 47 times. Welcome to a rainy day with children.
Luckily, rain doesn’t have to mean writing the whole day off. If you’re searching for things to do with kids in Tunbridge Wells when it’s raining, we’ve pulled together five ideas that range from completely free things you can do at home to getting out of the house and embracing the mess somewhere else.
1. Make your own indoor treasure hunt
This one requires very little preparation and can be adapted depending on how old your children are.
For younger children, create a list of things they need to find around the house. Something red. Something tiny. Something that makes a noise. Something soft. Something beginning with their initial. For older children, make the clues harder and turn it into a proper treasure hunt with something waiting at the end. You could even give them a phone or camera and turn it into a photo challenge instead. The best bit? You can make it last ten minutes or turn it into something that takes up a surprisingly large chunk of the afternoon.
2. Get outside anyway
Hear us out. If it’s raining but not absolutely pouring, sometimes the answer is to stop trying to avoid it.
Wellies on. Coats on. Find the biggest puddles you can. Go for a walk around Tunbridge Wells, head somewhere green or simply wander around your local area with a challenge to complete. How many different coloured leaves can you find? Can you photograph five interesting things? Who can find the biggest puddle? What can you collect to turn into something when you get home? Then come home, get dry and make hot chocolate. Sometimes a rainy-day activity doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.
3. Give them a cardboard box and a challenge
Before you put that enormous delivery box in the recycling, hand it to the kids.
The challenge is simple: turn it into something else. A castle. A shop. A spaceship. A robot. A car. A house for every soft toy they own. Add pens, tape, stickers, paper and anything else you’ve got in the craft drawer and leave them to it. If you’ve got siblings of different ages, give them one giant box and ask them to work together. You may get a masterpiece. You may get an argument about who is in charge of the Sellotape. Either way, it’ll keep them busy.
4. Go and paint the walls at PaintnGo
If everyone needs to get out of the house, this is where we come in.
At PaintnGo in Tunbridge Wells, children don’t have to sit carefully at a table trying not to get paint anywhere. They can paint directly onto the studio walls. Go big. Use loads of colour. Make something up as you go along. And enjoy the fact that for once, when your child gets carried away with the paintbrush, the wall is exactly where the paint is supposed to go. It’s a particularly handy rainy-day activity in Tunbridge Wells when you want something creative but don’t particularly fancy turning your own kitchen into an art studio. You bring the children. We’ll deal with the paint.
5. Make a rainy-day jar for next time
This one won’t necessarily save today, but future you will be very grateful.
Get everyone to write down things they’d like to do on little pieces of paper and put them into a jar. They don’t have to be elaborate. Build a den. Bake biscuits. Make a film. Have an indoor picnic. Draw each other’s portraits. Make paper aeroplanes and have a competition. Create a dance routine. Make a comic. Have a Lego challenge. Every time you get one of those grey Kent rainy days and nobody can decide what to do, someone gets to pick from the jar. No negotiations. The jar has spoken.