We all have those days where the children are home from school, and as much as you want to get out of the house, the weather is just not cooperating with you. Of course, this happens plenty here in the Jupiter / Tequesta area, when Florida goes through its rainy season. So we thought this would be a great chance to arm you with five ideas for the next time those skies open up and let loose.

1. The Fort:

We would be remiss if we didn't include this old standby on our list. We are sure that practically everyone at some point in their lives built a fort. Once the fort is built, the possibilities are endless, only bound by the imagination of the children that are playing in it. Whether your kids are below deck on a pirate ship or in a secret hideout carved into the side of a mountain, it's up to them to decide.

2. A Scavenger Hunt

You can be as extravagant with this as you want to be, and this idea can be adjusted to suit children of all ages. Give the children their first clue and then hide the other clues around the house.

This can be both fun and educational making them think about where the next clue might be. If you are trying to have them learn new vocabulary words, you can give them a dictionary and or thesaurus and use words they would not have known in their clues. This gives them the opportunity to learn new words while simultaneously teaching them how to solve puzzles. The prizes at the end can range from a piece of candy to an hour of watching TV or a movie of their choice or even a cool new toy.

3. Trivia Game

As with the last idea, you can make this as extravagant as you would like. This is a great opportunity to have your children learn about any subject. If you don't already know what topics are currently being taught in class, you can always ask our teachers and we would be glad to help provide you with some material. Your trivia questions can then be formed around the topics to help reinforce what your kids are learning in our classrooms at Mary, Mother of the Light Academy. As with the scavenger hunt, no prizes necessarily need to be rewarded at the end of the game, but we will leave that up to you.

4. Fairgrounds Games

Here is a list of "carnival" game ideas that you could play safely indoors; the prizes at the end are of course optional:

• Bouncy Bucket - You could have your kids attempt to bounce a bouncy ball into a bucket without the ball bouncing back out. It is best to do this where the ball cannot bounce somewhere and break something, perhaps down a hallway.
   
• Hex Nut Stacker - Put five large hex nuts onto a wooden skewer or pencil. The object is to slide the hex nuts off one at a time, and stack them one on top of the other, as fast as you can. The child who stacks all five hex nuts first wins!
   
• Penny Stacking - The object is to stack 25 pennies - one handed - as fast as you can. The winner might even be lucky enough to get to keep the pennies!
   
• Cookie face - Place a cookie on your forehead. The goal in this game is to get the cookie into your mouth using only your facial muscles as fast as you can, using no hands of course!

5. Fill a Jar & Guess the Number

This is a quick and easy one that can be done again and again. If you do not already have a spare empty jar lying around at home, next time you are done with a jar, wash it out and keep it in your cupboard. The quickest way we have found to approximate the number is one of two ways:

1.  Count about a half a cup of worth of whatever it is you chose to fill the jar with and weigh it out on a scale. It can be jelly beans, pennies, legos, anything! You can then fill the jar and weigh the contents. If you use a kitchen scale, you can "tare" the jar first and then fill it up and weigh the jar again. You can then use simple math with the total weight and the weight of the amount you counted before to solve how many are in the jar.
    
2. Alternatively, if you don’t have access to a scale just count half a cup of worth of whatever it is you chose to fill the jar with. Then count how many half cups it takes to fill the jar and multiply those numbers together.

These are just five of the many ways that you can entertain children while it rains outside. At Mary, Mother of the Light, we love choosing games and activities that are fun but also educational. Do you have any go-to activities for rainy days that you'd like to share? Let us know in the comments!