We can’t always be outside, but we can have just as much fun in the home. This winter, challenge your child to imaginative indoor activities that enhance their gross motor skills and challenge them to use their toys and household items differently by building indoor forts.

Best of all, you can have a little fun, too.

Build Indoor Forts

We build forts often in our home. If I’m being honest, I think my husband enjoys making them just as much as my toddler son enjoys playing inside them, but they make a great team. And I’ll admit to even sneaking inside with a book and hot chocolate by myself after my son has gone to bed. Forts are not only fun, they are the coziest!

The easiest forts begin with blankets and furniture. You could throw a sheet over a kitchen table and allow your child to build a super secret hideaway underneath. Or, push some couches and chairs together, and toss a blanket up top. My husband likes to use our kitchen table chairs and clothespins, pinning our biggest blankets on top and draping more blankets down the side.

And don’t forget pillows! Line your fort with pillows for ultimate coziness, but encourage your child to use their imagination, too. Pillows can be used as blocks for their fortress or a pillow bed for a reading corner.

Another cozy fort is to make a canopy over a bed or mattress on the floor. And if you use a light sheet, you can string white holiday lights along top for a delightful glow inside.

Speaking of white lights, try building a fort with cardboard boxes, then poke holes up top to put holiday lights through it, creating the perfect starry night sky. Continue on with your “indoor campout,” and lay out a sleeping bag inside with a plate of S’mores at the ready. What fanciful campfire stories do you think your child could tell?

Lastly, air forts are simple and delightful to a child. Tape down a bed sheet to the floor, then place a fan at one corner to create a big dome for your child. Encourage them to bring in a flash light or lantern, books and blankets, and snuggle up inside the windy cave!

Do you have a favorite method for fort building? Share with us in Chat! Don’t forget to send a picture as well.

About the Author

Angela Tewalt is a writer, storyteller and mother to two boys. She shares parenting stories and inspiration in Guidepost Parent.

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