Rainy-day Activities

I grew up in Southern California, where it was almost always 75 degrees and sunny. As a kid, I relished the prospect of rain, overcast skies, or even a bit of morning fog--any excuse to curl up in a chair and read a book or fill my sketchbook without having anyone say, “It’s such a beautiful day--why don’t you go outside and play?” The truth is, too much of anything, even sunshine, can feel oppressive. Now that I live on the East Coast with my family, there are plenty of occasions (some might say too many) to make use of the great indoors.

Project Cooking: The goal is to draw out meal-preparation time as long as possible and to choose recipes in which kids can genuinely participate.

• Pizza: Kids can help pour ingredients for dough in a bowl, and once it’s mixed, they can help knead and roll. Parents can prepare toppings in individual bowls (several kinds of grated or sliced cheese, tomato sauce, cooked sausage, sliced pepperoni, sautéed onions, sliced mushrooms, pesto sauce, etc.), and kids as well as grown-ups can create their own pizzas. The key is to make the dough balls small enough that each person gets to create at least a couple of different pies. The tasting experience gets drawn out over time as individual pizzas come out of the oven for sampling.
• Crepes: You can market them as very thin French pancakes. As with the pizza extravaganza, you want to prepare a bunch of different fillings--in this case both sweet and savory--so everyone can customize and then taste their own creations. Sample fillings: sautéed spinach and Gruyère or cheddar cheese, ham and cheese, sautéed onions and cheese, jam, Nutella, honey and sliced bananas.
• Fresh pasta: About a year ago, we bought an attachment for my stand mixer that allows us to make fresh pasta. My kids love to help feed the pieces of dough into the machine, which after a few times through yields ludicrously long, thin sheets of pasta. The pasta maker has multiple settings, which allows us to make spaghetti, ravioli, lasagna, etc., all with the same dough. So whenever we make pasta from scratch, we double whatever recipe we are using and freeze the leftovers in plastic sandwich bags. Kids can help stuff ravioli with any number of fillings, including my family’s favorites: ricotta and spinach, ricotta and Parmesan, and pureed butternut squash. The beauty of this kind of project cooking is that once you have your options set up on the counter, you can create all kinds of things. Fresh pasta freezes and reheats beautifully, too, so you can enjoy the fruit of your labor for weeks.
• Activities: You can feel like the most creative mom on the block even if you don’t have the killer craft arsenal—or if you’re like me and don’t even know how to sew a button.
• Make a Movie. Kids love watching themselves on video, and almost every parent has a video camera. Enlist their imaginations to come up with a “script” or, if the kids are too young for that, at least a cast of characters and a basic plot line. Have them take turns announcing the start of the scene (“Act 1, scene 1”) for effect. Sample plot line: Two little boys discover a baby dragon who has been separated from his mom. (Something with a dramatic arc and plenty of action gives the “actors” something to work with.) They take said dragon baby under their care, smuggling him in their backpacks and into their teepees so their parents don’t discover the fire-breathing creature and demand that they get rid of him. Then the boys help the dragon find his mother again. It’s an opportunity for makeshift costumes and masks (just cardboard with holes for eyes that’s attached to a Popsicle stick with masking tape). Parents can have fun playing the dragon or themselves.
• Write and Illustrate a Book. Using the newsprint, storyboard an original story with your child (this applies to kids who don’t yet read or write anything beyond their names). Our storylines generally involve a little boy who finds himself on a pirate ship or who finds himself among elves at the North Pole. (Kids tend to like thinly veiled references to themselves and their own lives.) Keep the plot simple, as the key is to let your child spend as much time as possible illustrating or decorating the pages with pens, crayons, and glitter (so you can get a seven-minute magazine break). Use the “good paper” (as opposed to the newsprint), and fold several sheets in half and punch two holes along the fold. Bind the book by threading colorful yarn through the holes--it’s the little flourishes that differentiate this project from any old doodle.
• Paint a Wall Mural. It sounds like a much bigger deal than it is, and the good news is that you can always paint over your mistakes. In our house, we went through a period where my son Henry and Uncle Gregg drew nothing but circus trains at the kitchen table. Night after night, the two would one-up each other, adding new characters and levels of detail to the drawings. The rest of us got to witness a curious evolution from the predictable (giraffes and lions) to the utterly absurd (penguins in a freezer car, monkeys on a spaceship). The result was a kind of greatest-hits amalgam that ended up on Henry’s bedroom wall. It took a couple of hours for Henry, Gregg, and Henry’s dad to pencil-sketch an outline on the wall, and a day to paint it using regular water-based wall paint (some brands offer small sampler pots, which are cheap and allow you to try a number of different colors). Henry was able to help with both in certain sections. The rest of the family brought snacks, took photos, and weighed in on design and color schemes.
  Tip: Those who are afraid to commit to a large mural can get their feet wet by painting a frame on the wall in which to hang a snapshot or a drawing.