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45 Activities To Do at Home With the Kids

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It’s summer time and many of us are trying to keep the kids entertained with at home activities.  If you are trying to keep yourself from hearing those dreaded words of “I’m bored” from your kids, here is a list of 45 at home activities for kids that you can do, to not just pass the time, but have fun together as a family.

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Indoor Activities

Movie Night/Afternoon: Hold a movie night/afternoon at home. Pick your favorite movie and pop some popcorn and watch together as a family.

Do Karaoke: Karaoke Songs are very easy to find on YouTube. What makes it even more fun is using a fake microphone or even a real one that can connect with bluetooth to your phone.

Make Puppets and Put on a Show: Use paper bags or old socks and have kids make their own puppets. You can create a puppet theater out of a cardboard box and then put on a puppet show.

Do a Puzzle Together: Have a puzzle at home that you bought or were gifted but never completed? Now is a perfect time to work on the puzzle as a family.

Have a Paper Airplane Race: Have each family member make a paper airplane and then throw them and see whose goes the furthest. This can be done multiple times. Change up the design to see what works best.

Have an Indoor Picnic: Our kids love to have an indoor picnic. They get to eat on the floor, enough said.

Hold a Jam Session: If you have instruments at home, everyone in the family can choose something and you can have a jam session. If you don’t have instruments, let kids pick something that makes noise and they can create their own instruments. Make up a song to go with the music that you are playing.

Build a Fort: Give kids a couple of cardboard boxes and let them build a fort. They can decorate the fort as they choose and even add blankets and toys to make it more comfortable.

Related Post: Twenty Cheap Things to Do in Orlando

Games

Do an Indoor Scavenger Hunt: We did an indoor scavenger hunt for my daughter’s birthday party and it was tons of fun. The same could be done just for your family. We hid clues all around the house. One person would have to sit out the game as they would be the creator of the game.

Play Minute To Win It: Minute to Win It is a lot of fun to play with the kids. Each team has one minute to finish a challenge. Here is a list of minute to win it games you can try or you can come up with your own.

Play Pictionary: Pictionary is a lot of fun to play as a family. Kids get to be creative and the family gets to play a fun game together.

Play Make Me Laugh: Make Me Laugh is a game where you fill your mouth with water and sit across the room from somebody else. They have to try and make you laugh in 60 seconds. If they make you laugh and spit out the water, they get a point.

Play 20 Questions: Think of a person, place or thing and everyone else has a total of 20 questions to try to figure out what it is.

Play Charades: Kids love acting, so charades is a fun game for them. If you have young kids, you can have separate bowls with different strips for kids and adults.

Play Taboo: Taboo is a great game to play if you have a larger group of people. It’s when you are split into teams and you have to get a team member to guess a word while the other team members don’t say any of the words that are Taboo.

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Cooking and Baking

Bake Cookies: My kids love baking. Now is a great time to bake some cookies from scratch. Pinch of Yum and All Recipes have some great recipe options that you can try out.

Make Ice Cream in a Bag: We have made ice cream in a bag with the kids before and they enjoyed the activity as much eating the ice cream afterwards.

Make Your Own Bread and Butter: We took a baking class and overwhipped whipping cream and turned it into butter by accident. And what do you know, it tasted really good. A fun activity would be to make your own bread and butter.

Make Jello: My kids are always asking to make jello, so I thought this would be fun for the kids to make and something they can pretty much do on their own

Bake a Cake and Make your own Buttercream Frosting: While we don’t bake too many cakes from scratch, we will make buttercream frosting from scratch. It is amazing what it does to a box cake.

Outschool has over 10,000 classes that will delight kids of all ages. Kids can take cooking classes, music classes, art classes, Harry Potter classes, math, science and much more!

Arts and Crafts:

Tie Dye T-Shirts: Tie-dying t-shirts is lots of fun and the kids will enjoy the design. You can order a tie-dye kit online or you can use food coloring to make your own tie-dye. Here are instructions on how to create your own tie-dye at home.

Paint a Picture: We have various paints at home and the kids love to paint on plain paper or on canvases. You can sketch a simple design with black marker on canvas for the kids and they can create a painting that they will be able to hang up.

Make a Splatter Painting: Splatter painting is a lot of fun, but messy. We would advise putting down some plastic tablecloths before doing this activity. Kids get to splatter paint over pieces of paper, making unique forms of art. There are different ways to splatter paint; you can try one or all of them.

Build with Legos: My son loves to build things with Legos and can stay for hours just building stuff. My daughter likes Legos as well, but prefers building the sets and having something to display at the end.

Related Post: 11 Tourist Attractions in Orlando for Locals to Visit

Learning

Read a Book: This is the perfect time to read that book. If you have a kindle, you can download books for free from the library. You can also get books delivered to your house by the Orange County Library System.

Do a Science Experiment: You can do some great science experiments at home this week. Go beyond the mentos and diet coke rocket or baking soda and vinegar volcano. Here is a list of additional experiments you can do at home with the kids.

Take a Museum Virtual Tour: Take a Virtual Tour of different museums around the world from home. Kids will especially enjoy seeing the mummies at the British Museum and seeing artifacts from the Mayan civilization at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.

Take a Free Online Class: OCPS offers a lot of free programs for kids online. My son loves ChessKid and Brain PopJr. Kids can also learn to code with Hour of Code and Code Studio. Discovery Education also has lots of fun learning activities. All of these programs are available for free on launchpad.

I use Rakuten to get rebates on my everyday shopping online and then use the money that I have saved to for fun activities with the family.

Make Your Own

Make Your own Kinetic Sand: My daughter has made her own kinetic sand at home before and it is very easy to make. Since it is made with household ingredients, it is also safe for kids.

Make Your Own Play Dough: If you have younger kids, the probably love to play with play dough. Play dough can get expensive and only comes in certain colors. You can make your own at home as a fun experiment and have more options for the littles to play with.

Make Your Own Crayons: If you have old broken crayons around or a box of cheap crayons, you can use them to make cool mixed crayons. Chop the crayons into small pieces and put them in a baking tin and bake for 15 to 20 minutes in a muffin tin or mini cake tin.

Make Slime: Making slime at home is a great way to pass time. Here is a great recipe we have found to make some.

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Indoor Athletic Activities

Have a Dance Contest: Hold an impromptu dance contest for the kids (and the adults).

Make an Indoor Obstacle Course: We have put together indoor obstacle courses using furniture and toys and then time the kids as they get through the obstacle course. We’ll change it up with different obstacles as they get through it.

Have a Sword Fight with Pool Noodles: My kids love to fight each other with pool noodles. It’s a lot of fun and doesn’t hurt as much as a regular play sword.

Make a “Laser Course” with Yarn: Use yarn to make a laser course at home. Weave the yarn in and around furniture and kids have to make it through the course without touching the yarn.

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Outdoor Activities

Play a Game of Soccer: Get out a soccer ball and have fun kicking it around with the kids. You can get some fresh air while still staying home.

Fly a Kite: Kite flying is a great way to pass time. We flew a kite in our backyard. While it wasn’t a ton of space, the kids still had a great time running around with it. You will definitely need lots of wind for it to work correctly.

Play At-Home Ping Pong: Playing ping pong at home is a lot of fun. You can play on the dining room table or your patio table with just balls and paddles. If you want to set up a net, We have played ping pong on the dining room table before.

Hold a Water Fight: If you have SuperSoakers then hold a water fight. It could be adults vs kids, girls vs. boys or everyone for themselves. No SuperSoakers, fill up some balloons with water and go for it.

Play Dodgeball: If you have a bunch of softer balls at home then dodgeball in the backyard could be a lot of fun. Form teams and then go for it.

Play in The Sprinkler: Turn on the sprinklers in the yard and let the kids run around and get wet. This was our favorite activity when we were kids and I think kids today will love it too.

Make Chalk Art in The Driveway: Making chalk art was also a fun activity as a kid. Give your kids some chalk and let them go outside and make art.

Play in The Mud: Let kids have a special messy day where they can go outside and play in the mud. They can make mud pies, mud houses, and just get messy.

Go Camping in The Backyard: Pitch a tent in the backyard and go camping outside. Tell stories, make s’mores, maybe even project a movie outside.

Let us know if you have any additional activity ideas!

 

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