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Entertaining Things To Do With Kids When You Are Stuck At Home
Are you stuck at home with your kids and looking for some easy activities you can do with little or no preparation? Here are 10 different things you can do with your kids while you are stuck at home!
10 Easy Ideas to Entertain Your Kids at Home
Picnic
A picnic is a super fun and easy way to change up any day. If you have a deck, patio, or yard, and the weather is nice, you can have a fun picnic outside and get some fresh air. Alternatively, you and your family can have a fun picnic for lunch or dinner on the floor of your living room or on top of a bed.
Kids don’t need a perfect picnic, with a perfect picnic basket or picnic blanket. As long as you change things up and do something a little different, your kids will love it.
For our picnic, we ate lunch in our backyard on some beach towels. I made sandwiches and had some grapes, carrot sticks, and chips in Ziploc bags. Both girls loved getting some fresh air and sun. We enjoyed our lunch as a family and, best of all; it was free since we used supplies we already had in our house!
Indoor Obstacle Course
When my girls get stuck indoors for too long, they have a lot of excess energy to burn off. The way we accomplish this is to make an indoor obstacle course! You can make a traditional obstacle course or, if you’re short on time, you can use a fun exercise obstacle course I created using printable cards.
Traditional obstacle course
You can use anything you have on hand to create an obstacle course! A jump rope, pool noodle, or a long strand of string are things you can use to jump over. Use a chair or table to crawl under. You can also use a bunch of different toys to zig-zag around. The possibilities are endless.
Exercise obstacle course
The exercise obstacle course is super easy to set up and doesn’t require a ton of room. Using cards with different exercise poses, place a series of cards down and have your child do each action in order.
Scavenger Hunt
A scavenger hunt is a great great way to entertain your kids while incorporating learning. Here are two different ways to create a scavenger hunt for your children.
Photo Scavenger Hunt
A photo scavenger hunt is a great way to keep your kids occupied and also learning. Using different sheets, you can have your child take pictures of colors, letters, numbers, and shapes while you explore the outdoors or just around your house. I have created some free scavenger hunt cards to print out, you can download them here!
A Traditional Scavenger Hunt
The traditional scavenger hunt is a great way to teach your kids to listen and problem solve. I like it best when there is a prize at the end. For my husband’s birthday this year, I set up a scavenger hunt to find his birthday presents and made the clues easy enough for our four-year-old to problem solve her way to the next clue. Here is a list of the clues (and answers) I made.
- This is the start of your journey, so let’s make it fun, you will find the first clue under where you put your bum. (My husband’s chair at the kitchen table)
- Tons of toys you will find in this room. Look for a toy that says “vroom, vroom, vroom!” (A toy car in our toy room)
- Under the place where we read books, find of story and take a look (There was a book under the bed we sit on each night to read bedtime stories)
- Find a small house inside a room. Look on the top floor for your next clue (A dollhouse in our youngest daughter’s room)
- To where my car lives you must go, inside this thing, there should be clothes (In the garage, the presents were inside a dresser I have to paint)
It was a lot of fun to find Daddy’s presents before he got to open them. Our oldest needed a little help figuring out what each clue meant, but she caught on quickly.
Build a Fort
My kids love forts. Of course, the youngest doesn’t really understand that she can’t push or stand on the fort. But, she’s still learning.
Building is a fort is a fun way for kids to use their imaginations too. We have an old sheet that we use to make our fort. Sometimes, we even add a blanket to make it bigger. Then, the fort can be anything the child wants. A rocket ship, a house, a castle, or even a stage for a puppet show.
To build a fort, all you need is a sheet or blanket and some chairs or a table. In our “toy room,” I like to use the couch, piano bench, and small kid chairs from our table set. It makes it a very “open concept” fort on the inside.
We also have 2 popup tents we use have pulled apart and draped a sheet over it to make a courtyard between the two “houses”. The girls love going back and forth between the two tents and under the sheet.
Bake Something
Baking with kids doesn’t always turn out the way you planned, but kids learn a lot in the process. I let our 4-year-old help dump in the ingredients and crack the eggs (if there are any) to build fine motor skills. We never make anything too complicated because my daughter’s attention only lasts for about 10 or 15 minutes. I like to make simple things like a cake in a box, muffins, pancakes (that we add food coloring to and make it a bit more fun), or simple cookies.
My only rule is if you don’t listen, then you can’t help mommy.
Have a Race
I like to do races with one child at a time to avoid any injuries! I use a timer and have them run a path I’ve explained ahead of time. I have found there is a lot of pushing and bumping into one another if both girls race at the same time so we keep it separate. It also reinforces taking turns.
Sometimes the race is as simple as running around the kitchen 3 times and other times it can be more complicated like run around the unicorn chair in the den, then run around the kitchen, then race to the finish line (streamers make a perfect finish line and they are inexpensive). The child with the fastest time wins!
I have seen a lot of different recipes to make your own play-dough, but this is the one I have used since I was a kid. It is super easy to create and uses things you probably already have in the kitchen. You can download the play-dough recipe here for free!
Use food coloring to make it any color your kids would like and it last un-refrigerated for up to 3 months.
This play-dough is also a great DIY gift for a friend or as a party favor. Purchase a plastic container (your child can even decorate it with stickers), place the play-dough inside and you have a one-of-a-kind gift your child made!
Dance classes for kids on YouTube
I always look for free workouts on YouTube for myself, however, I never thought to look at any kind of dance class for my kids.
One rainy day while my kids were running around in obvious need of an outlet for their energy, it hit me. OF COURSE!! I don’t know why I never thought of it until then. Lookup a dance class for kids on YouTube!
There are so many great dance videos. (I stayed with my kids to make sure all the videos were appropriate for my girls) and, as a bonus, I got some exercise in for myself as well! My favorite videos were the Zumba Kids videos.
Mail a Letter or Picture Your Child Drew to a Friend
Growing up, I always loved getting things in the mail and my kids do too. So one day, I found some blank cards and let my daughter draw in them. She then told me what she “wrote” so I wrote it out so our friends and family knew what she wanted to say.
Everyone who got a card loved it! My daughter used crayons, but you can use anything you have on hand.
Your child can also use stickers, construction paper, printer paper, a sheet from a coloring book, or anything else you have. It only requires an envelope and stamp, and our grocery store had both!
Movie night - With a Twist
Movie nights with the family is always fun. You can also make it extra special by making it a “drive-in” movie or a campout. To make a drive-in movie, you can use boxes or bins you have around the house and help your child to decorate them like a car.
Or, to have a camping movie night, you can set up pop-up tents and let them lay down in them. You could even make s’mores in the microwave if you are brave enough to give your kids that much sugar!
If you don’t have a tent, you could create a pallet on the floor using blankets and pillows.
Entertaining your kids doesn’t have to cost a lot or take a lot of time. Any of these ideas are easy to do when you are all stuck at home. Making everyday things a little special will help you and your kids have some more fun while you are stuck at home.
