Engage kids in 'true play' on wintry days

BOISE, Idaho — It's a long winter afternoon, you want to stay inside, and the kids are raring to do something new.

But you don't have to put a movie in the DVD player to keep them occupied. There are oodles of easy projects that will entertain for hours, from indoor puppet shows to tea parties to homemade play dough.

Look for things the kids can do themselves — not games that tell them what to do.

"When you get to turn the couch into a castle, that really develops the cognitive and social and even the physical skills in a way that doesn't happen sitting in front of a television," said Sherri Iverson, the executive director of the American Academy of Pediatrics chapter in Idaho. Iverson is also a nurse who runs parenting classes at a Boise hospital. "In true play, children develop social and emotional skills that they don't get any other way."

One easy project is a puppet show, which can be staged on something as simple as a table — with a tablecloth — or the back of a couch. Wendy Blickenstaff, a Boise landscape painter with two daughters ages 7 and 9, has turned a wide doorway in her home into a theater with a collapsible curtain rod — the kind with springs on the ends — and some sheets (hang the curtain halfway up). Discount stores such as Marshall's sell elaborate cloth shower curtains, with fringe, that can give your homemade theater an authentic look.

For the script, Blickenstaff has her kids make up their own stories or use classic tales like "Three Billy Goats Gruff" or "Hansel and Gretel." Those well-known stories are easy to present as good short shows and have all the necessary ingredients: dialogue, danger, suspense and resolution. Stories with swordplay or other physical conflict are usually a hit.

The puppets themselves are easy to come by. Stuffed animals and dolls fill many roles, and puppets can be produced from socks — with stick-on eyes from the craft store, or buttons, as facial features. Paint pens work well for puppet features, too.

If the kids don't have a wolf but they love the story of "Little Red Riding Hood," adapt it and put on a play with a menacing lion — or whatever stuffed animal you have on hand — instead. Stage the story of the three little pigs with penguins, if that's what you've got. If all else fails, use found materials: Press a cow-shaped salt shaker into service or build some props out of Legos. After my family read a children's book about the first ascent of Mount Everest, my kids re-enacted it several times on the bunk bed with yarn, action figures and Barbies.