Is the weather not nice enough to venture outside?
Luckily, there are plenty of activities you can do inside the warmth of your home that are creative and delightful, including baking, reading, playing video games, making art projects or (drumroll please) creating your own Fort Night Challenge.
A Fort Night Challenge, you say, how would we do that? Well, the beauty of this activity is that there is no wrong way to build a fort in your house.
Have a large box or two lying around? Awesome! Get out those markers, stickers, scissors, tape and crayons and get busy decorating and designing your amazing box fort. Have more than one box? Make the house extra tall. Have some warm blankets or a small pillow? Set them inside your box fort and enjoy your cozy reading spot.
No boxes, no worries! Maybe you have some tall kitchen chairs. Bring four or five of them into the living room, or any open carpeted space. If you point the seats of the chairs towards the inside of your fort, you’ll have a great place to set snacks or a small lantern for light.
Find some larger blankets, or even the comforter from someone’s bed, and drape them over the chairs to create a soft roof. Crawl inside with snacks, toys, comfy pillows—and shazam! You've created a chair fort.
Take a peek at your couch. Do the cushions come off? If so, get ready, because they make great walls for a short fort. Balance them against each other in a square or rectangular shape and climb inside. Spread a blanket along the bottom for a cushy fort floor. Some pillows or books will go a long way to help keep those sides up.
Have you ever tried an air fort? If you’re looking for a cuddle space that also incorporates scientific concepts, this is it. All you need is a big fan (ideally a box fan, but circle fans work also) and a fitted sheet—the larger the better. Simply tuck the sheet around the fan, hold the sheet in place with a book or stuffed animal, and crawl inside your newly created space. Bring books and pillows inside and spend the afternoon talking about the science behind wind power.
Most of these ideas have been for the low to zero budget, but if you’re in the market for a few fort-building tools, these little purchases can go a long way. Makedo’s simple tools will transform your cardboard forts into a whole new world. Make blanket fort building a breeze with these wooden fort clips that can be used over and over again for years of creative fort building. Or if you’re looking forward to a snowy winter, give these snow fort builders a spin.
For larger purchases, there are various types of fort building kits available. You can find a list of reviewed products here.
No matter how you build it, the Fort Night challenge offers a fun, safe and creative experience for family bonding that supports literacy and learning. Keep the whole family enthralled and cozy for hours on end.
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