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.
