Rainy Day Fun at the Virginia Living Museum {Family Connections Summer 2012}
Once again I’m joining Aurie, Lisa, Amy, and Connie to share ideas for fun, family activities for the summer. We hope you’ll stop by every Wednesday to share in our theme or link up your own posts about great summertime fun for the whole family!
And wow, don’t I feel silly! Last week I posted about Nature Notebooks and summer learning fun, and then said that this week would be our series wrap up–but it’s not! This week we’ve got some great posts about rainy day fun ideas. (Next week is our wrap-up!) What can I say, back-to-school has got me wiped out and running in a thousand directions lately.
Are you looking for some inside fun this summer? I know we’ve had thunderstorms and muggy temperatures around here lately. No fun!
Here’s some of our favorite inside activities (with some pictures from our recent trip to the Virginia Living Museum, which we took in the rain, even though part of it was outside!):
- Baking! Who doesn’t like a sweet treat on a rainy day? This would be the perfect time for making popsicles–and hopefully the sun will come out when they’re done so you can eat them outside! Inside days are also perfect for decorate-your-own cookies or cupcakes. Just cover the table (and the floor!) with a plastic table cloth, spread out colored sprinkles and little candies, and let them go to town.
The Museum has this great sundial exhibit at the front entrance that we can never get to work. {smile}
- Sewing! Ok, this is mostly my Ladybug and I. My boys don’t sew. But they actually love to sit in my room (on momma and daddy’s big bed!) and watch me. Or stand right at my elbow and watch me. Or say they’re watching me while they’re really mixing up my thread box and playing with my button box. But it’s quite a cheerful domestic moment. Looking for easy sewing projects? How about this simple skirt?
Our kids have been to VLM before, and their first stop was the shark tank–only one little shark, but he makes a big impression every visit!
- Nature journaling! Doing some drawing, field guide id-ing, and scientific observing–of anything and everything–has been a go-to activity for us this year. All you need a composition book and some colored pencils. But a ruler, magnifying glass, and some tweezers can be fun too.
They’ve got a great, kid-friendly sized touch tank with stools all around it in two different sizes. It’s the most kid-friendly place I’ve ever been to. They know exactly what their visitors need!
- Adventure Radio/Audio Books! This is new for us, but just before we headed to Mimi’s house recently we invested in volume one of the Jonathan Park adventure radio show for the car ride. It was awesome! We all enjoyed it. It’s also perfect for listening in the house on rainy days while coloring or playing legos quietly. It’s learning and relaxing and especially the Cowboy seems to love it. We can’t wait to get the next set!
The discovery learning centers have tons of nature-related displays, with counters for kids to spread out on, magnifying glasses and microscopes to look through, and bones, skins, horns, and more to be touched by little fingers.
- Go to a museum! We visited the Virginia Living Museum a few weeks ago while it was rainy out–even though part of it is outside and most of my pictures are a little fuzzy from the drizzle! They had tons of interesting things for the kids inside too. Touch tanks, discovery learning center, an awesome honey bee exhibit, aquariums and wildlife habitats…we could have easily spent all day there in the air conditioning and not cared that it was raining outside.
Since it’s the Virginia Living Museum, everything is focused on animals and habitats local to our area, They have displays of different bird nests, how to id the nest type, and what kinds of materials the birds use, including trash! They have several cases of butterflies and insects, and castings of all kinds of animal tracks.
- Curling up together with a book or movie! Yes, sometimes we love to just pile on the couch and watch a family favorite together. Stay in our pjs all day, eat popcorn (homemade!) for lunch, and just veg-out together. It’s great. Occasionally.
And of course, they have animals. A police siren when by and we got to see the coyote jump up and start howling. We also got to see some of the usually napping animals get up and head for cover when it started raining harder. The rain let us see certain behaviors we wouldn’t have seen if the weather had been nicer.
What’s your favorite rainy day activities with the family?
What summer fun have you been up to lately? Link up a new or old post about your great summer family activities. Please keep it family friendly and link to you post, not your homepage.
And be sure to come back next week and join us!
We really will be wrapping up our fun summer series and I’ll be talking about some of our back-to-school activities before we head into the fall.
Audio books – that is a great one. I really like how your post looks and reads this week.
Have a great day,
Amy
Great ideas. We would love a visit to that museum!
I forgot about audio books! My olders loved those when they were young. I think I’ll have to get some out for my younger two girls. 🙂
We have some messages on CD and they’re ok, but even Mr. Fix-It gets bored after a while. These adventure shows were wonderful! The stories are all about creation science and biblical family and friend relationships and the sound effects, etc. were awesome. Our boys really loved them.
I LOVE this post!! This is the first time I have been to your wonderful blog, and I’m enjoying my visit. I will be impulsive here and ask you to consider linking up to our “EOA’ Wednesday link-up party to share this with other readers. It is just the kind of encouragement I’m desiring to share there 🙂
Many blessings, new friend!
Jacqueline
I did! Thanks for the invite and for stopping by!
What a great resource – we really need to get to the Franklin Institute. We have reciprocal passes – we just need to GO!
The touch tank is a great idea. I don’t know how many times at the shore or during walks in the wood that I am asked, “is this OK to touch, Dad.”
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