Making sure the children stay active is tricky enough at the best of times. Not only must they be entertained, but it needs to be done around your own daily schedule. That’s why we’ve come up with five quick kids’ activities to help you keep your children active and entertained, without impacting too much on your own packed itinerary.
1. Indoor Treasure Hunt
An absolute classic kids activity. Choose an item and hide it somewhere tricky (but not too tricky) for the kids to find. Make sure it’s nothing particularly valuable or breakable, however! To add an extra element to the activity, you could write clues to help them use their brains a bit more to try and find the object.
2. Who can Hold a Pose the Longest?
Adding an element of competition is an absolute key part of so many kids’ activities. Get the children to write down different poses or actions. Put them in a bowl and the youngest can draw one out. They then all hold that pose or keep doing that action until there’s only one left – they’re the winner!
Actions or poses for this could include anything. Ideas such as hopping on one leg, running on the spot, stand on one leg, complete jumping jacks. Anything. It will keep them occupied and the competition element will help focus their minds!
3. Hide and Seek
Another legendary kids’ activity. We’re sure you know how to play, but just in case, we’ll refresh your memories. One person is the seeker and everyone else finds somewhere to hide. The seeker then searches the house for those that have hidden. As they find those that have hidden, they’re recruited on to the seeker’s team and have to find the remaining kids that have hidden. The last one to be found is the winner and is the seeker for the next round.
4. Indoor Skittles
You will need nine unbreakable bottles – empty pop, squash or water bottles are perfect – and a ball. You’ll also need a little bit of space for this one. Arrange the bottles at the end of the hall or living room like a set of ten-pin bowling pins. You can fill them with water a little bit if you like to help keep them stable. Not too much though, otherwise they might not get knocked down by the ball! Each person gets the bowls per go and see how many ‘skittles’ each child can knock down per go. Keep a note of this and the one who has knocked down the most skittles after 10 or so goes is the winner. This is a fantastic kids’ activity and one that is guaranteed to keep them entertained.
5. Indoor Basketball
All you need is a bucket/empty bin/big bowl and a rolled up sock and you can turn your house into a basketball court. Each player takes a turn at throwing the sock into the bucket. When a player gets the sock in the bucket, he or she takes a step back and throws again until missing. The player who shoots the ball in the bucket from the farthest distance wins. Simple!
So there you have it, five quick kids’ activities that will help keep the children entertained and active while they’re stuck at home. We hope you (and they) enjoy!