About Rainy Day Projects
Rainy Day Projects publishes things to do with children at home, written for the adult who has to make them happen. Each activity is a set of numbered steps, a list of what you need, a note on how long it takes, how much help your child will want and how much mess to expect, two or three ways to vary it, and a one-page step card you can print and put on the table. Everything is free, needs no account, and uses things most households already own.
Who it is for
Parents and carers of children between about three and ten. The instructions are addressed to you, not to the child: each step says what you do or say, because you are the one reading the page while a bored child hovers. Every activity carries an age band — 3 to 5, 5 to 8 or 8 to 10 — but treat it as a starting point. A careful six-year-old can do many of the 8-to-10 activities with a hand nearby, and a restless nine-year-old may prefer a younger one with more room to run.
How an activity is written
The site has 8 kinds of activity — builds, pretend play, arts and crafts, kitchen projects, science experiments, active games, quiet activities and paper crafts — and a fixed list of themes. Each theme-and-kind pair is one set of three activities, written together so they cover different age bands and do not repeat each other. An activity has to pass a fixed brief before it is published: household materials only, with anything you might not own marked optional; no oven or hob for children under eight; no step that needs more than an adult alongside; and a plain-language line on what a child gets out of it, with no education jargon.
Every activity also carries a short video script — a shot list for a one-minute vertical clip with no faces and no on-screen text. When a video has been produced from it, it sits at the top of the activity page and loads only when you tap it. Until then the page is complete without it.
About our content
The text on this site — the steps, the materials lists, the variations, the page copy and the video scripts — is written by Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, working from the brief above, a description of the theme and the kind of activity, and a published set of content rules. The site itself, the brief, the checks and the choice of what to publish are made by a person. The activities are for informational use, at your discretion. They are not childcare, medical or safety advice, and no page can know your child, your home or what is in your cupboards. See the full disclaimer in the terms of use.
Activities require adult supervision. Adapt them to your child’s abilities. If a step looks wrong for your household, skip it or change it; and if an activity is unclear or a step is unsafe as written, tell us and it will be corrected or taken down.
Two ways in
The homepage opens with four situations — rainy day, snow day, sick day, birthday party — for when the day itself is the problem, and then a grid of worlds — dinosaurs, space, ocean, pirates and the rest — for when your child will do anything as long as it is about that. Every theme lists all the kinds of activity available for it side by side, so a dinosaur afternoon can start with a build, move to a craft and end with a quiet game. A theme-and-kind set only appears on the site once all three of its activities are published; there are no empty pages waiting for content.
Who makes it
Rainy Day Projects is run by one independent publisher, alongside a small group of sister sites that do the same job for school worksheets, printable planners and pet care forms. There is no company behind it, no funding and no team. The site is supported, eventually, by advertising; there are no ads on it today. When there are, they will be kept clearly apart from the activities and never placed inside or beside a video.
Getting in touch
Corrections, a theme or a kind of activity you would like to see, and questions about printing or using the step cards are all welcome. Use the contact page, or email us directly.