Is it raining outside or is the heat draining your motivation to leave the comfort your house? No matter the reason, you don’t have to worry about having a bored little one on your hands if you decide to stay indoors. Because we’re bring you a great list of Indoor Activities to do with Your Little Ones!
1. Word Search Challenge
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Some people may find Word Search boring but let me assure you, there is nothing boring about a Word Search challenge.
You’ll need two copies of Word Search puzzles—either print the same puzzle twice or get two different puzzles with equal number of words to search for.
You can challenge your little ones or team your little ones into two groups and see who completes their puzzle the fastest. Although from personal experience, I must warn you, this game can get a bit addictive.
To make it more challenging, you could setup a timer and see how many words a person can find within the allocated time. And if you’re challenging your little ones, you may want to get Word Search puzzles with longer words than your little ones.
Not only is this activity fun, Word Search is said to develop pattern recognition, broaden vocabulary and give a sense of accomplishment upon completing a Word Search puzzle.
2. Build A Fort
Build a fort with sheets or blankets, as big or small as you wish anywhere in your house and get your little ones to help you with it. Then grab some pillows, books, toys, cookies and escape into your fort with your little ones.
Have a tea party, animated storytelling sessions, read, draw, play with toys, pretend-play, or if your fort is facing the television, you can snuggle up with your little ones for a movie night. Oh, the things you can do in your fort!
3. Bake
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You should definitely try baking with your toddlers. I admit, it might get a little messy but not only is it a great bonding activity, baking boosts your little ones’ confidence, develops basic skills such as listening and counting as well as improves their vocabulary when they learn new words from a recipe.
You can let them help you fetch ingredients, add them, stir them, give them a small portion of dough to knead, use a cookie cutter to cut shapes out of the dough, let them frost a cake, sprinkle toppings on cup cakes and I could just keep going.
Alternatively, you could also bake or get some plain cupcakes and set up a decorating corner for your little ones with different flavoured icings and toppings such as chocolates, candies, marshmallows, sprinkles, nuts, fruits, and crumbs. Give them a free reign over the decoration and watch them get creative!
4. Treasure Hunt
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Treasure hunting is a good workout for your little ones, physically and mentally. What’s more, it fuels your little ones’ problem-solving skills and encourages creative thinking
Create simple and short riddles that when solved will lead your little ones to the next clue and hide around the house, with a prize hidden at the final location.
To make this more fun and stimulating, instead of riddles, you can use mini games or a combination of games and riddles as the clue. You could ask them to solve a puzzle, paper maze, a simple math equation, build a particular shape with building blocks, make the sound of or act like a particular animal, act cute or angry, and so forth.
The fun of this game is that you can get as creative as you want with the clues and activities you include.
5. Produce a Movie
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Give your little ones a camera on-record and ask them to narrate whatever they see around the house, you’ll be surprised by their imagination.
If your little ones can write, get them to write a story or script. Get your phone out and record them as they act out the scenario, act it out with them, or they can act it out alone if they wish. If your little one wants to record their siblings acting, let them be the cameraman.
In addition to giving their imagination fodder to grow, you’re also allowing their communication skills, sense of responsibility and confidence to grow.
6. Indoor Obstacle Course
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If your little ones love jumping from one couch to the other, they’ll absolutely love an indoor obstacle course. It is much easier to set up than you might think.
You can tape a masking tape to the floor and tell your little ones to only walk on the line. Topple some chairs or stretch a cloth between chairs to create a tunnel and let them crawl under it. Grab your couch cushions or pillows from the bed and pile them up and have your little ones climb over it.
Settle a stick up between two chairs and let your little ones do the limbo. Pile up some cushions and have them jump over it. Have some toys in a straight line and get them to run in a zigzag around the items. The possibilities are endless.
If only one kid is doing the race, you could time them to add a sense of thrill and have them attempt to beat their own timing for the next round.
If your little ones are competing, you can have the winner decide what to have for dinner, give them the choice of picking the next destination for a day out or such.
7. Keep the Ball Up
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A game I used to play growing up which admittedly could get quite competitive when played with siblings. If you want some free time, toss them a ball and watch them go at it for hours.
To make it more challenging, you can tell your little ones to only use one hand to keep the ball on air. You could also use a balloon and tell your little ones to only use their head.
8. Art & Crafts
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Stimulate your little ones’ imagination with arts and craft works, a great way for little ones to express themselves and develop their creativity.
Gather some blank papers—small or big—or a transparent sheet, spread out some crayons, markers, paint, coloured pencils and pens and let your little ones create a masterpiece with them.
Model clay to look like their favourite characters or animals, use beads to create simple ornaments or jewellery, make masks out of paper plates, and teach your little ones to fold paper birds.
9. Indoor Relay Race
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Instead of simply running with a baton in hand and passing it on, you can have your little ones do something before the baton passes hand.
For example, the first child with the baton has to leap like a frog to the next child and the next child has to hop on one feet to the next child in line. Then that child may have to run holding a spoon with an egg on it to another child who would then have to run with a bowl of water without spilling any of it to the next child. This child might only be able to move on certain colour of tiles to the next child and so on. You could keep the race going without breaking it by having the last kid with the baton move to the end of the line.
An indoor relay race is much more fun if you have more than one kid to play but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it work for just one kid. You could have your little one do all the tasks instead of different kids doing different tasks.
10. Visit an Indoor Playground
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Or you could just visit an indoor playground and let your little ones explore the space. You’ll find ball pits, kiddy rides, slides, mini rock climbing walls, pretend-play, building blocks, interactive play and so much more for your little ones to play with.
Use our extensive list of indoor playgrounds to help you choose the playground to explore!
