16 Ways to Have Fun With Your Child at Home

From time to time, you might find yourself looking for cool things you can do with kids that don’t involve screens. Sometimes, coming up with fun new ideas can be challenging, but in reality, there are still lots of new activities you can do. For example, you can give a little twist to ordinary drawing by making a life-size and colored version of yourself or create your own 3D city.

Try any of these 15 games and crafts put together by Bright Side.

1. Make a life size drawing.

After a few regular coloring pictures, your kid might get a little bored with it. They will for sure fall in love with coloring again when you suggest coloring life-size drawings of themselves.

2. Blow up a baby pool and put your kid in it with their toys.

Have your kids play safe and sound with their favorite toys in an inflatable pool.

3. Let them make puzzles to send to their friends.

Most kids like to play with their friends as much as possible. Unfortunately, this is not always an option. To solve this issue, you can suggest that your kids make a nice drawing for their friends. Once it is finished, glue it onto cardboard and cut it into puzzle pieces. Send it to friends and who knows, maybe your kids will get a puzzle in return!

4. Write letters to family.

Sometimes our loved ones live far away and it’s hard to visit them as much as we’d like. A good way to make kids feel closer to those family members is to create letters for them. Plus, it’s an excellent writing exercise.

5. Make your own 3D city.

Kids can make their dream city come to life with this fun activity. Have them plan the location of the streets on a simple piece of paper and then craft the buildings in 3D. For the buildings they can use toilet paper rolls or empty drinking cartons like shown in the picture.

6. Play inverted hide and seek.

To mix up the regular ’hide-and-seek’ game, you can try playing it inverted. How does this work? One person hides and all the others start looking. If you find the person, you join him/her in the hiding spot until everyone is together in that spot! The one who is the last to find the spot will be the first one to hide in the new round.

7. Decorate T-shirts or linen bags.

With some colored markers or paint you can let them get creative on shirts or linen bags. Tip: print out some pictures so that they can trace those lines or re-create the image.

8. Turn kids into little creative chefs.

It’s always fun to have your kids help you with the regular cooking or baking cookies. To make this experience even more pleasant, you can first ask the kids to create their own recipes (based on their favorite foods) and then cook what they invented.

9. Make tissue box monsters.

Any used tissue box will do. Later you can use them to put candy or toys inside or as a candy wrapper trash receptacle.

10. Create bookmarkers.

Not only will your kids love making bookmarks like this, after they are finished they will want to find their favorite book to insert the marks in as soon as possible!

11. Let your kids prepare a small show for you.

Kids will be busy preparing the show all day and later you will have fun with the whole family when you’re watching the show. You can even make it more official by buying a ticket from them for a few cents.

12. Start an indoor garden.

By using old eggs shells and putting in some seeds and soil, you can create a mini-garden for your kids. They can check the progress of the plants every day and will learn about responsibility in a playful way.

13. Let the kids go on a mission or a treasure hunt in the house.

Create some fun riddles and puzzles that you hide throughout the house. When each puzzle is solved, it will give the clue for where the next puzzle can be found. By making the puzzles easy or a bit harder you can adjust them to your child’s age. Of course there should be a prize at the end of the hunt!

14. Redecorate or rearrange their room.

To break the cycle of doing the same thing every day, you can have the kids rearrange their room. Put all their furniture in a slightly different place and redecorate. Their room will feel like a whole new place to play in.

15. Create toy parachutes.

You can use napkins, foil, some cloth, or anything else you can find around the house! Connect a little Lego man or any other toy to your parachutes and find out which material floats the best. You can do the same experiment with paper airplanes. Create different types and see which one flies further!

16. Do small science projects.

With some simple materials, you can have your kids do small science projects. For instance, let them do the rainbow milk experiment. Drop some food coloring in a shallow dish with whole milk, then cover a Q-tip in liquid soap and see what happens when you use it to gently touch the colored parts in the milk.

What fun activities have you already tried? Which of them did your kid find the most fun?