Dad ideas

[Lefty]

Family blog and all. I'm a fairly inventive Dad and enjoy playing with the kids. But even I have my limitations of creativity. Here's a spot to share ideas for rainy days or afternoon killers when they're bored.

-Pissclams linked "how to build a fort" in another thread. Incredible website with detailed instructions. Don't have link handy, but I can find it if needed.
-My kids are small still 4 & 3. They enjoy the basics like looking for monsters and dragons with flashlights.
-Wadding up paper and shooting hoops into a trashcan was surprisingly entertaining for them.
-Our favorite is to walk through KSU campus on afternoons and look for Dragons in the Castles.

[Emo EMAW]

Are you Dom Sutton?

[Mr Bread]

Having them look for things they'll never find seems questionable. 

[Mikeyis4dcats]

this is one area Pinterest does well.

[star seed 7]

Force them to learn other languages

[pissclams]

teach them to sew and then sell them to your indonesian neighbors

[steve dave]

I am probably the greatest game creator of all time for 19 month old kids

-take your little people cars and hide them all under the couch cushion while mom is in the other room. when mom comes back dad asks her where they are and lil sd and dad both go and make her look all over for them until we finally lift up the couch cushions and show her they were under the cushions the entire time and them we lol at her stupid ass for like an entire minute because she didn't know they were there. boom, roasted. go read books and make her put the little people cars away.

-take our big box of plastic tools and dump them all over the play room floor and then hammer the crap out of like our little tikes basketball goal, and slide, and all the furniture, and whatever. then do the drill on all those things. then the reciprocating saw. then make mom clean all those tools up because we're reading books now.

-point at dogs.

-see an airplane. completely lose our crap about it for an entire minute.

-play doh. make a snake. smash it all over. go read books.

-get our tiger push toy, make dad push the dog push toy, mom has to push the learn to walk push toy thing that's for little babies. basically we have a race with them but make sure mom gets last. boom roasted. go read books.

-daniel tigers neighborhood and curious george. watch like a half episode and drink milk.

-find a little bug and squat down until your face is like a foot from it and just stare at it and point at it periodically.

-ride on dads shoulders and point where he has to go and touch stuff that's normally too high to touch. mainly want to touch dangerous stuff.

-open a cabinet and pull out every single thing in it until it's just in a pile on the ground and then go read books.

-put things in a salad spinner and spin the living eff out of them. become enraged when something like twice the size of the salad spinner won't fit inside it to be spun.

-want to go outside when it's like 10 below zero because normally we go outside right now. become enraged when we can't go outside. get packed into like a huge coat and gloves and hat and go outside but then turn around and go right back inside because it's too cold.

-want to draw with colors. mainly just smash them and throw pieces all over. go read books.

I have like a million more

[meow meow]

Take kid's small stuffed animals and hide them around the living room, make kid try and find them.  Fun for everyone.  Ages 2 and up.

[Pete]

When my son was 4 or so, he always wanted to take super hero action figure into the bath with him, and I would have him make two random ones pop up out of the bubbles and they would have to battle, and we would spend a few minutes really breaking down why a given super hero would beat the other one.  Pros and cons type stuff.  It made him actually want to take baths, which can be an issue sometimes with little kids.

[meow meow]

Geotrax 

[Pete]

Geotrax 

We built a rough ridin' ton of Thomas the Train tracks in my living room. 

[Pete]

Also, those Thomas the train pieces and trains are expensive, so look on Craig's list.  Get get them in Johnson county for pennies on the dollar on Craig's list.

They drive Mom's rough ridin' crazy.  Setup huge tracks, and then demand that they are left up for days, Mom's hate that.

[Emo EMAW]

Uzi night at the range

[nicname]

Build fire pit. Make fires. Make s'mores. Eat s'mores.

Go to the woods.

Go fishing.

Get two computers with minecraft on them and then log onto minecraft servers, then beat the living crap out of whiny teenagers and then tell them that they just got beat by a 4-5 year old while he types trash talk like "kjkkkksdaasda  asdsa  MAXXXXXXXXXX."

[XocolateThundarr]

Three words:

NERF GUN WARS

[Cartierfor3]

A lot of good ones so far. Here are a few of my favorites:

Ramps. You can build ramps and launch cars off of them. Use blocks, old pieces of wood in the garage, cardboard, whatever. The bigger the better. Make one that goes all the way down the stairs. Put like a lego guy on a car and LOL (SD hide the lil people game style) like crazy when he falls off. You'll never run out of things to throw down a ramp.

Bouncy balls. 'nuff said

Play Peter Pan, or any character. You be captain hook, kid is Peter pan (and tinkerbell). Lock the kid up in "jail" (couch or bed) and then take a nap (just pretend). Wake up and find they escaped! OH NO!!!!! I'm Captain Hook And I'm Chasing Peter Pan!!!!!

[SkinnyBenny]

GOAT kid advice was given by CF3 here and then expanded to be even GOAT-ier by me a little later. Also, have your kids act out the animals. Right now you're probably like, "this sounds dumb," but in reality YOU'RE the dumb one because kids love this.

Aquarium=

[Benja]

I don't know much about 3 or 4 year olds. But when they get a little older you can play the game where you turn off all the lights and throw stuff at each other until somebody gets hurt. We used to love that one.

[Benja]

I mean, you probably shouldn't participate in that game as the dad, I'm not suggesting that. Your strength and intelligence advantage would probably give you an upper hand, though.

[Lefty]

Johnny Kaw is an enormous statue of course, but he also stands at the top of pretty rad perfectly sloped hill for small kids. It's amazing how many times a 4 year old will watch a ball roll down the hill and try and chase it repetitively. The hill is also good for doing burrito rolls down. So the next time you hit City park while educating your kids on a MHK historic site like Kaw, take advantage of that hill. I haven't built up the courage to take one of their hot wheels along for them to ghost surf down though.

*any small hill will do.

[The Big Train]

about 20ish years ago a little TBT would spend countless hours playing on that statues feet and scythe thing, as the little TBT grew up kaw didnt seem that big anymore, but the little TBT now a full grown man appreciates the time spent climbing kaw's feet.  i think you have a good thing going lefty is what i am saying.