Last year I offered a free eBook, 100 Indoor Activities for Kids {TV Not Included}. I’d like to freshen up that eBook, and include many creative ideas from my sweet readers.
This eBook will be free for everyone!
This is very simple. Leave me your ideas (as many you’d like) in the comments below. If you have a blog and would like to be linked to in the book – just leave your link along with your idea. That’s it!
I pray for this eBook to be a help to moms in the harder, indoor, winter months. Thank you for sharing your tips, tricks, and ideas for keeping the kiddies busy and engaged when it’s freezing. 🙂
The following two tabs change content below.
We are here to help families afford the homeschool life by providing the BEST homeschool freebies, deals, resources we can find & encouragement as we walk this journey together!
Latest posts by Free Homeschool Deals (see all)
- Saxon Math 3 Resources - March 31, 2025
- Wonderings eZine - February 27, 2025
- All About Me Coloring Page Bundle - February 24, 2025
- FREE Valentine’s Day Printables, STEM Activities, & Experiments! - February 4, 2025
- Top 10 STEM/STEAM Activities for the Winter Months! - December 2, 2024
Sometimes, I feel like indoor days are a little easier than outdoor days because I don’t have to worry about what the kids are wearing (as much) or keep track of where they’re going, etc. They’re all contained — even though the house is a little louder and crazier than some days — I like it.
One idea that keeps the kids busy is “random craft supplies.” When I have stuff left over from various planned crafts, old magazines they can cut up, and/or boxes that have been sitting in the garage waiting to be recycled, I pull it out on our homeschool table and let them create. They come up with some of the coolest art projects when they have the freedom to create whatever. Then we can spend a little time letting them present their artistic creations to the rest of the family (practice public speaking, while we’re at it).
Another idea is one of my 8-year-old daughter’s favorites and that’s to put together an impromptu play, dance or other creative performance. She coordinates all her siblings to participate in “the show” and then they perform it for me later in the day. It’s great to see them working together and cooperating, regardless of how successful the resulting performance is!
The kids also love impromptu parties. There is something to celebrate almost any day of the year. They can create the decorations for an hour or two. Some of them can help in the kitchen to create a special treat to serve. Check out http://www.daysoftheyear.com/ or http://www.brainyhistory.com/ for some fun/funny reasons to celebrate (not all of these may be family friendly reasons to party). Sometimes it’s just our family and occasionally, we get to include some friends or neighbors in our last minute party.
I can think of many more, but for now, I’ll leave you with the three. 🙂
My tips are for very little people. I have two sons, who are almost 4 and almost 2.
Jigsaw puzzles are a big hit with the older boy right now, as are playing with blocks and a wooden train set. Of course, anything round is a wheel, and who doesn’t enjoy splashing in the bathtub or kitchen sink?
The toddler has reached the phase of enjoying moving small things from one container to another or dumping out and putting back. With his older brother we did this game with a box of rubber bands (also fun for tossing handfuls at each other), but this time the toddler uses a box of paper clips. Obviously, supervision is required for this.
I’m planning on introducing the older boy to painting a paper mache after his birthday.
One thing we do is have one of those mini trampolines in our house. We pull it out and plop it down in the middle of the living room and jump to their hearts content. Helps get the squirrelies out.
I have boys…ages 6 and 2 this year, and to combat winter cabin fever this year we are making preparation ahead of time. This summer, we invited the boys cousin who lives in the area over for a weekend we called Cousin Camp! We did some swimming, outdoor games, snacks, crafts, made personalized camp t-shirts and more. This winter we are planning a Winter Cousin Camp! We home school, but our niece is in public school. So we have picked the weekend after Christmas and before she has to go back to school to do it. She is a bit older, 9 years old. We plan games and crafts (marble run from a pool noodle cut in half, lots of snowman and gingerbread crafts), and some winter type science experiments. We plan on making personalized t-shirts again (last time we did Sharpie tie dye….so easy) and do what we call a “Carpet Camp Out”. We put blankets over the Dining Room table and make a make shift tent and toss some pillows and blankets and maybe a sleeping bag in, and that is where the kids love to sleep. They sleep under the starry night (a dome light my son has that is cordless and makes stars upon the ceiling). Hubs gets the propane camping burner out and we roast hot dogs and marshmallows for smore’s. We sing songs around the “fire” and laugh and make some great memories. I think we might even make cardboard guitars with rubber band strings this year to strum while singing. So my advice…..think outside the box!!!
The kids like video chatting with Grandma(she lives in another state)…they can play i spy or the kids can put on a play or they can read stories to each other or sing, sing a longs or dance together…it can get pretty hysterical!
My kids love water, so a couple things we do with water:
-give each child a wet rag and possible a small bowl/bucket of water and instruct them to wash the legs of the dinner table and the baseboards
-let them shoot mini water-guns into the bathtub
-fill the tub or sink with little objects and let them’fish’ with a strainer
-let them wash veggies and fruit in the kitchen sink (sure to get water on the floor, but fun and accomplished something!)
Others:
-hide and seek
Things we do inside, on a cold Manitoba winter day or a rainy stormy day:
– Angry Birds stuffies and piggie cans (homemade game)
– Making story books with paper, pens, stickers and paint
– Baking kid friendly treats
– Bird watching out our front window – who do we see.
– Macro photography – how close can you get, can you guess what it is
– Treasure hunts
– Blanket forts are always fun and easy to make
– scrapbook together, let the little ones use scraps or duplicate photos. No wrong way to tell your story.
– Make a stop action movie with Lego
My son says: read a book, under a blanket with a flashlight, play Lego, make movies with Hotwheels and trains, doing messy crafts, playing board games with whacky rules, read stories outloud and change one or two words to make them super funny.
We play catch the piggie with his big stuffed pig, we dance to music and make up our own lyrics.
Surf pinterest and blogs for ideas!
I have lots of ideas. When do you need them by? I have to look through my blog to write them all down for you.
Hello….I have a question….is the e-book only for people with Facebook? Can you look at someones page even though you don’t have an account? This seems to be very complicated for me cause everyone works through facebook…but I never got a peace about opening up an account so I didn’t. Is there anyway you could email me it? If not no worries….thanks God Bless.
Here are some things we’ve done:
1. Back the cars out of the garage, and let the kids rollerblade or pull the wagon around in there.
2. Find some never-used activities that you’ve downloaded to your computer. Print them out and do them!
3. Search for fun crafts on your Pinterest boards and do them!
4. Find all the blankets in the house to build a tent city.
5. Act out Bible stories.
6. Locate some instruments (or make some) and play along with some great music.
7. Draw– what you see outside, or set up something on the table, etc.
8. Look through old photo albums or scrapbooks.
–Gena Mayo at I Choose Joy!
http://ichoosejoy.org
Hey Ladies,
I think that for the older kids some fun playing some unconventional “Minute-to Win-It” games is a big hit. We also do role playing games (has some prep involved before hand) We play Vet, or Grocery Store, Drive-In Theater, or Library. I usually will make up reciepts that the kids can fill out, there is a vet checklist and prescription notepad, tickets for the drive-in and a concession stand with the same reciepts for the the grocery store. Library is pretty fun we use index cards and stamps, stamping the books w/ the date like in the “olden days” 🙂 Sometimes we will create obstacle courses with things we have around the house (ie: hula hoops, balls, jump ropes, and furniture) This last one may sound crazy, but I have 2 kids that LOVE water, so daytime baths are a big hit. We just fill the tub with bubbles and some “bath only” toys. I hope these help my kids really enjoy these things.
Puppets…You can make your own out of socks, felt, wiggly eyes, yarn , etc. Then put on a puppet show. You can make a simple curtain out of a piece of any fabric and a tension rod. Sew a simple casing for the rod to slip through and then put up in any doorway.
Playdough. The stuff you make yourself is the best!
Older kids- writing and acting out a play. They can use a video camera to record and then watch video together as a family.
Baking is always a fun activity to do inside (or cooking).
I also like to keep a journal for my daughter near the window. She can watch the birds that stop at our bird feeder and draw them.
We also like to do scavenger hunts. My daughter also likes to put on plays for us.
Another activity she really enjoys is making up her own town and drawing maps of her towns.
We pull the water table inside (minus the water!) and fill it with dried beans. My boys thoroughly enjoy scooping, pouring, and digging through the beans. Toy trains and mini construction vehicles have also made it into the action!
Having teenagers we do a lot of independent activities such as reading, making cards, and crocheting. As a family we play board games.
This one is a bit crazy, but lots of fun , if you’ve got the time for it. (I do this once a year at Easter, and tie a biblical lesson to it). I get several different color yarn, tie one end to a special treasure (one color yarn per child) and then make an obstacle course through the house (over/under , chairs, furniture, throughout different rooms, etc. and then give the other end to the child (after yarn is all over the house) and have child search for treasure. The idea is for the child to constantly hold on to their color yarn so they don’t get lost or confused as they seek out their own special treasure. This is really fun, has a great moral lesson, and makes an impact on the kids. (Plus it is fun for me – having 4 kids – creating a colorful maze of yarn through the house, and then watching the kids seek out the “treasure” and learn a good lesson at the same time.) Often, at the end, when all have found their treasures, we’ll sit around together, eat homemade cookies and read scripture pertaining to the biblical lesson I choose to emphasize. It’s fun and a great memory maker.
Something I did a lot a little kid was to write stories but recently I’ve learned some twists that could make it even more fun.
~ Write a story one line at a time. Write an opening line then fold down the paper so it can’t be seen. The next person writes the following line without looking at the opening line. Fill the paper, then read.
~ For older kids, you can the same things as above, but with comic panels instead of sentences.
~ Have all involved write a simple title at the top of a paper, like ” A Strange Object” then exchange papers. Write a short story, draw a picture or a one page comic based on the title and then see what everyone came up with.
~ Use a random word generator that can bring up multiple words and use those as writing prompts. This could also be used to generate ideas for acting out things as well.
We have a child’s size putter and a few golf balls that they like to hit in the house (with very specific safety rules of course), we also like bowling with empty soda bottles that have been weighted down, building huge towers out of paper cups and then knocking them over, drinking tea and cuddling with a good book near the fireplace, puzzles, sewing, knitting, crocheting, making special play-doh, indoor treasure hunts with clues, hide and seek, using painters tape to make a “track” on the floor and line up objects or drive cars on it, making homemade soap or candles, baking, making movies, jumping on the trampoline (we keep it in the garage during the rainy times), hitting the punching bag (also in the garage)
I can not wait to read the updated version of this e book! I am always looking for new ideas, my kids go crazy when they can’t go outside, which happens here in the summer too because they don’t like the heat.