Want the wider swap-in approach?
This printable is the day-to-day version. Our rainy day swap-in plan explains the thinking behind it in more depth.
Read the rainy day swap-in planCan I Make a Printable Rainy-Day Football Plan?
Play Plans and Challenges > Rainy Days > Printable Plan
I got tired of trying to remember our rainy-day football plan from memory every time it actually rained, so I stuck a version of it to the fridge. It's still there.
There's something about a rainy day that scrambles good intentions, and somehow nothing comes to mind in the moment. A printable plan solves that specific, unglamorous problem: you don't have to think of anything when you're already frazzled. You just look at the fridge.
Short on purpose, not detail
What Makes a Plan Actually Usable, Not Just Nice to Look At
A lot of printable activity plans are too busy to be useful in the moment. Ours is short on purpose, one page, one glance, done. If you need to read more than a few lines to remember what you're doing, it's not really doing its job.
Stick it to the fridge
The Plan Itself
Here's the plan, a 5 minute football plan in five short stages, exactly as it's stuck to our fridge.
Our Rainy Day Football Swap-In
Before you start: soft ball only, clear the immediate space of anything breakable, rug or mat down if you've got one.
1
Warm the room up (2 minutes). Roll the ball back and forth, sitting or standing, walking pace. No target yet, just getting moving.
2
Set up one gate (3 minutes). Two cushions, a stride or two apart. Dribble the ball through. Miss it, go again, no pause.
3
Pick a target (3 minutes). A cushion propped against the sofa or wall. See how many hits you can get, together, not against each other.
4
Free play (2 minutes). Whatever your child wants to do with the ball for the last couple of minutes, no structure, no correcting.
5
Finish on a good one. Ask "one more go, or shall we stop there?" and mean it either way.
If it's getting loud: walking pace only, no jumping, swap the target game for the gate game, which tends to be quieter.
If they're not really in the mood: skip straight to step 4. A short, low-key session beats a longer one nobody enjoys.
Short on purpose
Why One Page Beats a Proper Booklet
I did try writing a longer, more thorough version early on, more games, more variations, more detail. It went in a drawer and never came back out. The version that actually gets used is the one that fits on a fridge without folding, and that's the one above.
The research behind it
Why a Fridge-Visible Plan Actually Works
There's research behind why a fridge-visible plan beats a good intention, something I only learned after doing it instinctively. A meta-analysis of if-then implementation plans found that a specific, pre-committed plan for when and how a behaviour happens becomes closer to automatic once the trigger, rain, restlessness, shows up, rather than freshly decided in the moment. This is a general behaviour-change meta-analysis, not a study of parenting or football, so it supports the mechanism, not a measured outcome here. See how Our Kickabout researches its pages.
Two plans, different jobs
Get Your Own Copy
If you'd like this as an actual printable page rather than copying it out, pop your email in here and we'll send it over along with the 7-Day Challenge, they're built to work well together, one for the rainy days, one for the rest of the week.
Keep going
Where to Go From Here
If today's plan isn't quite the right shape, or you want more structure.
Ready for a timed version?
A timed version turns this same plan into a clock-driven routine.
Use the timed 10-minute routineWant the whole week planned for you?
The 7-Day Challenge takes the guesswork out of every day, not just the rainy ones.
Read the 7-Day ChallengeTonight's five minutes
Stick This Plan to the Fridge Before the Next Downpour
Five short stages, two built-in fallbacks, one page you'll actually use.