Rainy Day Tents
What do your kids do when it’s raining outside? Watch TV? Play Video Games? Complain that they’re bored? One recent rainy day my kids pulled out the kitchen table chairs, all the sheets they could find and enough stuffed animals to stock a zoo. What was the plan? They were going to build a rainy day tent.
Rainy Day Tents
It doesn’t take an engineering degree to build a great tent but you do need a few basic supplies. My Mom is the master of building indoor tents out of basic materials, but since she was not here, the kids got to figure out what worked with just a little trial and error.
Helpful Items for Tent Building
- Sheets or light blankets
- Clothes pins
- Rubberbands: You can easily use the rubberbands to help secure the sheets to the knobs on kitchen chairs.
- Chairs
- Imagination
Things NOT to do
Never let children use heavy objects when building inside tents. When I was a child I attended a slumber party where we decided to build a tent and used a record player to hold one of the sheets up. You can imagine what happened. When we adjusted the tent on the other end, the record player fell down and bloodied one of the party guest’s head. Thankfully, she was fine with just a few stitches. But none of us who were a part of that party have ever forgotten the lesson learned. NEVER use heavy objects to help build a tent.
My kids had a great time building their rainy day tent. They even cleaned it all up when they were done!
When is the last time your kids built a tent in the living room? Got any great tips for young tent builders? I’d love to hear!
I remember doing this with my brothers and sisters a lot growing up.
I can remember doing this as a child. I thought it was just the coolest thing since sliced bread. My kids do it now and then too. Can always hear them chuckling under the tents.