Indoor Activities for Kids: 8 Fun Things to Do at Home
This week I decided to take a pause, and with the need to be home with my children, I wanted to make sure we were doing engaging activities that kept their mind and bodies active. This list consists of some of the fun activities we did, drawing inspiration from my daughter's distance learning activities, random things we found on YouTube, and ideas from the various mum chats I'm on.
1. Create a Drawing / Model of Your Pet (or Favourite Toy)
Thankful that I bought a craft kit during my daughter's Gabby's Dollhouse obsession, we decided to immortalise our rescue dog Monty into a cup model of himself.
What we used:
- Paper cup
- Pipe cleaner
- Coloured Felt
- Googly eye stickers
- Pom Pom for the nose
- Feathers for the ears
- Tape
- Scissors
The great thing about this is you could just go crayons/pens and paper, or find what materials you have around the house to craft a model of your pet or their favourite toy. This activity should eat up 15 mins to an hour, depending on the level of complexity you go for!
This is the Craft Kit we bought on Amazon and it comes with lots of great stuff!
2. Create a Home for your Pet / Favourite Toy
Now that we have our dog made, we then went on to create a home for them. All you need is a box to start with but feel free to decorate it however they wish. You'll find the kids will appreciate and use it even more than your pet ever will!
What we used:
- Large Cardboard Box
- Scissors
- Used sheets from our colouring book
- Stick on letters from our Craft Box
This activity should eat up 30 mins to an hour - maybe longer if they're determined to sit in the box every chance they get!
3. The Workout Badges with Hey Duggee & Joe Wicks
If your kids like Hey Duggee (and/or cartoons), Joe Wicks has created a series of workout videos for the kids in the Hey Duggee universe! Each video is workout badge earned and a fun way to get the kids moving. There are 14 videos in total which range between 7-8 minutes long!
4. Colour Matching Activity
If you have colourful toys like Lego, Magnatiles or painted wooden blocks and coloured felt squares, or coloured paper you can set up different colour 'zones' where you task your kids to match the colours of the items to the respective zones. It's a great way to support their learning of colours whilst also setting a fun activity to challenge their brain.
Make it even more challenging by setting a time limit with a song. We went with Bruno Mars and Rose's APT which is one of my daughter's favourites right now!
5. Make and Decorate Chocolates
Surprisingly easy activity, but can be a little messy - so get those aprons on if you have them! All you need are chocolate chips and silicone moulds. We originally bought the silicon moulds for me to make healthy jellies as my daughter was going through a gummy phase. Turns out jellies do not have the same consistency as gummies and I ended up having to eat all of them.
What we used:
- Hershey's dark chocolate chips
- Silicon moulds
- Pyrex measuring jug
- spatula
- microwave
Instructions:
- Melt ¾ of your chocolate chips in the microwave in a microwave safe measuring jug or bowl (make sure to remove and stir every 30 seconds so you don't burn it)
- Remove from microwave
- Stir in the remaining ¼ unmelted chips
- Keep stirring until smooth and slightly thickened.
- Then pour and smooth out into moulds
- You can decorate or put add ins - we added some chopped hazelnuts and marshmallows
- Drop the moulds to the kitchen counter to even out the chocolate and remove air bubbles
- Chill in the fridge for an hour until hard
- Pop out of the moulds and store in a container
6. Obstacle Course
Take whatever climbable, throwable and hoppable items you have to create the ultimate obstacle course! We started our course with a felt square hop scotch route, followed by a climb over the rainbow frame (you could use dining chairs or a sofa pouf), followed by throwing sand bags and balls into the target frame. If you don't have specific toys that meet the exact purpose, you can always use a laundry basket as the target, tennis balls instead of sand bags, and the list goes on!
Pair the obstacle course challenge with fun music and be the hype man for your kids to complete the course as many times as they can!
7. Dress Up As Your Favourite Book Character
It so happened that world book day was on March 5th, but regardless this is a fun activity where you can discuss your kids favourite books and see if you can come up with a creative costume based on what you have in the house! We went with a fairy in one of my eldest's favourite books, 'There's no such things as Fairies' by Lucy Rowland.
8. Pirate Treasure Hunt
Get the kids jumping around and doing a mini workout with this awesome video by Coach J! It will get them into the Pirate state of mind to the scavenger hunt portion of this activity!
After they've got sufficiently hyped up, set a blanket or a mat down as a beach and then set your kids a scavenger hunt to find things around your home to collect and bring back to the 'beach'. For us, I tasked them with finding all the animals that you might find in the ocean or lakes.
I hope these ideas help in keeping your kids entertained so you don't have to rely fully on passive screen time! This is a little glimpse into our past week while we've had to stay at home!