Try having a theme for the day – perhaps a particular colour, or animal, place or character.  Choosing a colour can also be a great way to encourage your child to try a new vegetable or fruit, especially when they have picked it out and cooked it with you. Dressing up in the colour, face painting, drawing, lego building, balloon games and even learning different names for it (scarlet or rouge for red) are just a few ways to have fun with the theme.

Fire up your child’s imagination. With just a little encouragement with setting the scene, they can enjoy being a dragon or princess, fairy or pirate for the whole day.Before you throw out old clothes or accessories, see if they can be used for dressing up. Use large cardboard boxes for indoor mermaid coves or dragon's dens.

One of the best things to start building up as your young family grows is a rainy day box – or boxes depending on how much space you have. Keeping a collection of items that are normally out of reach (and forgotten about) will brighten up a dreary day. Small paint sets, colouring books, jars of nik naks collected from Christmas crackers and party bags, old wrapping paper and modeling clay are a good place to start.  Painting and craft activites are fun everyday, but keeping a special art supply will make the rainy day fun even more interesting.  Even a few comics or magazines bought especially for the box will become a favourite for a rainy day. Save an old sheet or plastic tablecloth to cover the floor before the children start getting creative, it will make clean up time much quicker. And old adult shirts worn backwards on a child become the perfect artist’s apron. 

Consider dedicating a wall in the house as an art gallery wall for the children.Perhaps even painting an area with chalkboard paint so that they can draw in between their masterpieces that you have put up on display.If you don’t have a spare wall you could hang up string and peg up their art work like a washing line.

Remember to keep things at a height that the children can see their work but won’t get tangled in the string!

Keep a box handy to throw in all those weird shaped cardboard and polystyerene packaging pieces that electronics come encased in. They can become wonderful worlds that little lego people can explore, an alien backdrop for a space age puppet show, or a landscape for animals adventures