indoor carnival morning

I had a cold the other morning and had to figure out how to keep the kids busy for a little while. I decided to set up an indoor carnival for them! We set up five stations: bean bag toss, ring toss, fishing for money, hallway bowling, and hopscotch. Hallway bowling we've done before, and there are plenty of other great tape-on-the-floor activities along with hopscotch here. We luckily have a bean bag toss game, so that was easy! If you don't have one, cut several large holes in a piece of cardboard.

The biggest hit so far is a money game I made up. We haven't settled on a name yet, but let's call it "Fishing for $1" for now. We taped play money coins to card stock circles (nickels, dimes, quarters, and half dollars) and put a paper clip on each circle.

Then we flipped all of the circles over so the coins were hidden, and fished them out until we reached a dollar. This was fun a few times, then H came up with different amounts he wanted to reach. Finally, he decided he wanted more of a challenge, so I added a subtraction sign to a handful of the chips. This made the game really fun for him! This is a great way to stay sharp with money math, too!

Here is the ring toss I set up. If you have a base of a shape sorter, or even an old cd/dvd spindle tower, you can use that to toss your rings onto. We used magformers as our rings, but if you have the detachable rings from toddler bowls (to suction to a tray), those also work great.

This kept the kids busy for a good bit of the morning, and I am thankfully feeling mostly back to normal. I will have to stock up on some carnival "prizes" for next time to add to the fun - maybe pencil erasers, pencils, pennies, and bookmarks?