87 screen-free activities to do at home with young children
80+ screen-free activities to keep you entertained at home with small children
These are ideas from families in my classes – so many creative things they’ve been coming up with. We are still allowed out of the house, so simply adjust the list if you are in complete lockdown.
- Playing with water
- Hopscotch
- Games with chalk on pavement
- Lentil scooping with different jars, spoons and vessels
- Drawing on cardboard boxes from delivery
- Making cardboard houses – hang fabric to make a door
- Making a mouse house
- If you have tools at home, make a busy board with different locks, buttons and fastenings
- Yoga – cards that you can buy OR follow online yoga (Cosmic Kids on Youtube seems to be a favourite)
- Running trampoline inside
- Getting fresh air each day
- Puzzles
- Painting
- Drawing
- Cooking together
- Blowing bubbles
- Kicking balls
- Getting in the bakfiets for a ride
- Climbing and chasing each other
- Making obstacle courses – with tunnels and stepping stones
- Scissors
- 99 pen set with large butchers paper to draw on
- INDOOR CAMPING DAY – love this! Including eating snacks on the floor
- Playdough – writing names with playdough, making playdough, mixing colours of playdough
- Hang up some packing tape between 2 chairs and stick things to it, eg, balls, feathers, plastic fruit
- Gardening – plant a veggie patch – can even work inside
- Painting with water on wood or bricks
- Baking
- Moving a water table into the bathroom (look for a recirculating water pump for extra fun)
- Make a balance beam
- BLOW UP AN AIR MATTRESS in the living room for jumping on
- Hanging rings to swing from
- Move a slide inside
- Football – with soft balls inside OR outside if you can find a quiet place
- Stickers
- Washi tape – roads, tearing, pulling off a tray
- Making polaroids of the family at home
- Balloons! – throwing them, hanging them, dancing with them, catching them
- Make your own busy book – use cardboard for the pages – can make faces with velcro, open and close zippers, feel hand shapes of different textures, hide things in pockets – get inspiration on Pinterest
- Wear your bathing suit over your clothes for an inside beach day
- Use a wool needle + wool string for threading penne pasta – easier than a shoelace
- Dot markers – fun to use or just to take the lids on and off and put in and out of box
- You can find screws in a Hema wooden toy truck – add a shoelace to front for the child to pull
- Make your own marble run – use toilet rolls for the tracks (we’ll be making this together too in one of the classes)
- Use cardboard boxes to make a world and let child paint it
- Laying out a blanket at the park to wrestle (particularly if your child is getting too big for wrestling inside)
- Make a fun jar – have slips of paper with fun things to do and choose one per day
- Make a colour matching activity with an egg carton and wooden pop sticks – colour the bottom of the egg carton with a colour and make a slit for the pop stick with the same colour
- Watering plants
- Reading on the roof terrace
- Mixing colours – with paint, playdough etc
- ½ hour grandparent time where they read a book, do puppet time, via Facetime/Whatsapp etc
- Dancing
- SWAPPING TOYS WITH YOUR NEIGHBOURS – clean them and leave outside each other’s doors
- Sending drawings to friends from playgroup
- Felt art flowers or make your own felt board
- Origami a day
- Pouring coloured rice into different size containers
- Make slime with glue, shaving cream foam, colouring and glitter, eye contact fluid
- Make butterfly paintings – fold a piece of paper, squeeze some paint in the fold; close along the fold; spread out the paint and open to reveal your butterfly
- Setting up art trays eg, fold paper, cut out shapes from folded paper, then open to make patterns
- Grouping activities into trays or even zip lock bags to keep things together
- Making forts out of blankets, chairs and cushions
- Using pastry squares – make differnt shapes and cook them to eat
- Making a phone or computer from Lego
- Wobble board, pikler triangle, stepping stones
- Painting and glitter on giant paper
- Some sand or soil + water + cars in an IKEA box
- Helping with making beds, cleaning, washing clothes, pairing socks, and folding clothes
- Playing wth the dog/cat
- A kiddie pool (empty) in the living room
- Give the children the recyclables and let them create – boxes, bottles, and old clothes were turned into spaceships, race cars, and cities
- Lots of children’s books read on https://www.storylineonline.net/
- Stapler – around 3 years (with supervision) to make artwork into books
- Add rainbows to your windows
- Ideas from instagram like @play.hooray
- Make a suitcase for them to go on holidays
- Foam party
- I spy game
- Scavenger hunts (indoor and outdoors)
- Sink and float experiments
- Make a menu for your restaurant at home
- Massage
- Tracing around blocks with pencils
- Opening the home toolkit and looking at the tools
- Exploring your spice drawer collection
- Trace around your child for a life size self portrait – let them decorate
Do you have any fun things to add to the list? Comment over on insta here.
Simone Davies has more than 20 years’ experience as an AMI Montessori educator. Simone is the author of “The Montessori Toddler” and co-author of “The Montessori Baby” and “The Montessori Child” books, comprehensive guides to raising children in a Montessori way. She currently runs parent-child Montessori classes in Amsterdam at her school Jacaranda Tree Montessori. She also has a popular blog, instagram and podcast “The Montessori Notebook” and is mother to two young adults.