I live in the Midwest, and often my husband refers to it as “The Great White North” because we see a lot of snow this time of year. However, two weeks ago we had record breaking cold, and with the combination of cold and snow, Buddy and I were home together for three days. During the summer, we get out of the house every day, even if it’s just running errands. But when the roads are hazardous and the wind chill is -55 degrees, going outside isn’t an option. Here are some of the things we did to make our time together fun.

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Build Something

• Magnatiles – These might just be Buddy’s favorite toy ever. We love doing adding Jingle Bells to Magnatiles for extra play fun. (Read more about that activity here.)

• Duplos – We have been playing a ton with this Duplo set at our house. Buddy loves all of the different animals. Read this post about our Duplo busy bag and get the free printable.

• Wedgit Blocks – These are a lot of fun and different from a lot of other blocks.

• Build a fort and read- Buddy and I made a fort at Christmas time and read a ton of books in it. On our snow days, we set up his tent and read together inside.

Bake Something

We made apple fritter beer bread using this mix from Sober Dough. It was so delicious and so easy! Other baking favorites of ours include our cranberry cookie bars  and apple pie.

Play Games

• Board games – Buddy loves games, and we play a lot of them! I blogged about many of our favorites here.

• DIY games – It’s fun to make new games with materials around the house. We’ve had a lot of fun throwing fake snowballs into a bucket and playing bowling with cups.

Do Chores

We had a ton of snow one of our days home together, so Buddy and I went out to shovel. Buddy cleared the sidewalk in the picture above entirely on his own! Read more here about some of the other chores Buddy does at our house.

Find “New” Toys

• Check out new things at the library – I did this the weekend before the storm hit. Our library checks out puzzles, games, and other activities for kids. I grabbed a puzzle and a game to keep us busy when we were stuck inside. If you don’t have a library that does this, you could also exchange some toys with a friend for a few days.

• Pull out old, forgotten toys – I rotate toys because we have too many to have out at once. It helps a ton on days where we need something new to keep busy.
• Put two different types of toys together and find a new way to play with them – I let Buddy pull out a dinosaur while we were playing with play doh, and he had so much fun!

If you have any other good ideas for indoor activities, please share in the comments. I hope the worst of the winter weather is over, but there’s still a lot of time left before spring.