Winter Day Inflatable Play

Playing indoors all winter long can get monotonous. Kids get bored with the same old toys, books, and games. I decided to take a look at our pool toys and see if we could breathe some life into our playtime. Here’s our creative winter day inflatable play using our summer pool toys!

I brought in the Disc Toss Target Game from our box of pool toys. This inflatable game is perfect for using in the house. Everything is inflated and lightweight so there’s no possible damage being done to lamps, furniture, heads, etc. This toy consists of the inflatable goal and the two colors of inflatable discs. The kids took turns being the goalie and the tosser. We wrote point amounts on each disc (50 points, 100 points) with a sharpie. We decided if the disc made it into the goal you received that amount of points. If the goalie kept the disc from scoring, the goalie received half the amount of points. For example, the 50 point disc was thwarted so the goalie received 25 points. We decided to play to 500 points. The kids had a blast and we got double duty from that pool inflatable!

The other inflatable we brought in was The Cube Inflatable Float. This has been a favorite pool toy for my kids and their friends. They love hanging out, floating, or playing “king of the cube” in the pool all summer long. We decided to inflate this old friend and get creative.  Since The Cube has an opening on each side, we got out our huge roll of craft paper and cut a sheet of paper large enough to cover each opening. Each child was given markers, stickers, glitter, yarn and whatever other bits of odds and ends we had in the craft box. I asked them to be as creative as possible; creating a scene that was like looking into a window of a house. Once each was done with their art creation, we used painter’s tape to attach each “window” to the inside of The Cube so there appeared to be a “window scene” when looking at the cube from the outside. Their creations also provided a darker, quieter atmosphere inside the cube so we got some flashlights, blankets, pillows, snacks and favorite books to spend a little quiet time in this giant square.

Since we didn’t have enough window art work for all 4 openings of the cube, we covered one of the openings with plain paper in preparation for our next game – Shadow Hand Charades. We used the flashlights to produce light from the back of the cube pointed at the plain papered window. The player was inside the cube and had to create a hand shadow (in front of the flashlight) and the rest of us were on the outside trying to guess what the shadow was representing. I thought this game would be tough for the kids but I was quite surprised by their creativity!

All in all, our winter day inflatable play was a success! Plus, The Cube has found a permanent winter home in our playroom!