Rainy Day Projects

Sick Day Arts & Crafts for kids

Paper, glue, paint, and recycled-material projects with a finished thing to keep.

Part of Sick Day activities and all arts & crafts.

No-prep ideas for this

Something to say right now while you get the sick day set out — or instead of it. All the quick ideas.

  • Lie on the floor and see if you can stay completely still for sixty seconds.

    Lie flat on the floor and stay as still as you possibly can. No twitching, no blinking fast, no giggling. See if you can make it a full minute.

    5 minutes · Ages 3–8 · Adult alongside · No mess · Needs nothing

  • Scatter some dots on paper, connect them into a constellation, and tell me its name and story.

    Draw a handful of dots anywhere on the paper. Now connect them into a constellation and give it a name. Tell me the one-sentence myth behind it.

    5 minutes · Ages 8–10 · Kids can run it · Low mess · Needs: pencil

  • Dot the page twenty times, then connect the dots into whatever creature you want.

    Put twenty dots anywhere on a piece of paper. Then connect them however you like to make a picture or a creature. Give it a name when you are done.

    15 minutes · Ages 5–10 · Kids can run it · Low mess · Needs: paper, pencil

Sick Day Arts & Crafts at home

When a child is sick and bored but not miserable, the gap between 'I want to do something' and 'I have no energy to do anything' is real and awkward. A screen handles it, but it does nothing for the restlessness underneath. These three crafts are built for exactly that gap: they are quiet, they create no laundry and no cleanup, they can happen on the sofa or in bed, and they end with something physical the child made themselves. That last part matters on a slow day — finishing something, however small, is its own kind of comfort. None of these need you to be switched on and engaged the whole time.

What is in this set

The three sick Day Arts & Crafts activities here run from 15 to 30 minutes — Torn Paper Landscape Collage is the quickest, Woven Cardboard Coaster the longest. Between them they cover ages 3–5, ages 5–8 and ages 8–10, and each card below says which. None of them makes a mess worth mentioning. Each one wants an adult at least nearby.

Choosing one

For children under six, reach for Torn Paper Landscape Collage — it needs no setup beyond tearing a few sheets and takes whatever attention span is on offer that day. Folded Paper Pocket Book suits a child between five and eight who wants to feel productive and independent; it runs longer and asks more of them in a good way. Woven Cardboard Coaster is the one for an older child who is bored enough to want a real challenge but still needs to stay put. If mess tolerance is zero across the board, all three qualify — none of them involve paint or water.

Before you start

For all three activities, do the adult preparation before calling the child over: tear a few paper scraps for the collage, make the one scissor cut for the pocket book, and cut the loom notches for the coaster. The materials are already in your house — paper scraps, a cereal box, markers, a glue stick. The one thing that tends to go wrong across all three is bringing the child over before the setup is complete, which kills the momentum before it starts. Have everything within arm's reach of wherever the child is resting before you say a word about it.

More sick day activities

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