Activities for children at home

Activities for children at home

12 activities to keep your kids’ minds and bodies moving

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Here are some ideas for fun, and educational, games to keep kids busy, whether inside or out. Please share your ideas for things to do with kids at home in the comments section, or on our Facebook group for parents: Active at Home: Fun ideas to get kids moving. 

Math activities

Instead of worksheets, build numeracy skills through play. Here are some fun ideas to work on addition, subtraction, fractions, mental math, shapes, time, money, geometry, multiplication, counting, patterning, and estimating.

Shape Hunt

Kids (and adults!) love a good scavenger hunt. Put a twist on the search by having kids find items of certain shapes. When all objects have been collected, kids can then trace and colour in the items on a separate sheet of paper. If the objects are items that can’t be picked up, such as a clock on a wall, let kids use your smartphone to take a photo of the item.

Print out or draw a sheet with shapes and let the hunt begin.

For the youngest in the household, have them find objects that are of simple shapes such as circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles. Challenge older kids with searches for items in the shape of parallelograms, ovals, rhombuses, or scalene triangles.

This is a great game that can be played inside or out. 

Math skills used: geometry

How High is That?

Rulers and measuring tapes are surprisingly popular items that kids love to use. Before starting the game, have kids use the measurement tools to see how high one meter or 50 centimetres is so that they have a general idea of what length they’ll be talking about.

For an outdoor version of this game, use (according to the temperature!) snowballs or wet sponges. Have one child at a time throw their item at a wall or fence and have them guess how high the mark it made on the wall is from the ground. Record their guess and have the next child guess. Have the child who threw the item use the measuring tape or ruler to determine the actual height of the throw. Who was closest?

Indoors, follow the same process as above but with a moistened, not soaked, sponge. One tip from a mom who’s been there: while they may try to convince you otherwise, snowballs should really stay outside!

Math skills used: measurement, estimation, and statistics

Roll to Win

Have your child toss two dice and add up the numbers that are rolled. Write down the total on a piece of paper. Reroll and keep adding up the numbers until you reach 100 (or a smaller number for younger kids).

Math skills used: addition

Time My Move

Choose a move and see how long your child can perform it while another uses a timer to measure. How long can they balance on one foot? How long will it take to run up a hill? How long can they keep up a balloon?

Math skills used: time

Literacy activities

While reading is always encouraged, literacy skills such as letter recognition, writing, reading and following directions, vocabulary-building, retelling a story, letter-sound relationship, rhyming, and communication can all be practiced during active play.

Treasure Hunt

Hide an item somewhere inside or out and write clues for your little pirates to find the loot. Maybe they need to crawl across the couch, slide like a snail under a bed, reach behind a stool, or, if they’re outside, run to the pine tree, jump off a tree stump, dig into a hole, etc. Each clue can have words for older kids and pictures for younger ones.

Literacy skills used: reading and following directions

Freeze Dance Rhyme Dance

Crank the tunes and let the dancing begin. Unlike the regular game though, when the music stops, a designated person calls out a word. If the other dancer(s) can’t respond with a word to rhyme with it within a designated time period (say five to 10 seconds), that person is out.

Literacy skills used: rhyming

Lights, Camera, Action!

Kids will need some down time during their time away from school and odds are good that they’ll watch a movie or read a book or two. Have your kids reenact the stories while using your smartphone or tablet. Props and costumes will make this activity extra-fun!

Literacy skills used: retelling a story

Charades

Using a mix of easy and difficult words, have your kids act them out and see if their siblings or parents can guess what they are. If the kids don’t know the word they’re given, define it for them.

Literacy skills used: vocabulary-building

Science activities

Find your best (little) lab coat and use games and activities to explore the various branches of science that kids love, including life cycles, seasons, planets, animals, magnets, weather, states of matter (liquid, solid, gas), volcanoes, engineering, anatomy, shadows, senses, and paleontology, and skills including problem solving, observation, predicting, and classifying.

Oh, The Places You’ll Go (and the things you’ll see!)

Get online with your kids and find a park or trail near your home they’ve never been to before. Let them in on the decision-making and read about the types of trees, birds, or other particular features that can be found in that location. Bring along some water and snacks and set out to find all that you’ve read about. If you do find what you’re looking for, use your smartphone to take pictures home as a memory of the day. Take photos of other interesting birds, flowers, bugs, or trees. 

Science examined: animals and habitations

Erupting with Fun Volcanoes

Volcanoes are truly a lava fun. (Sorry—couldn’t resist!) 

Fill a plastic cup two-thirds of the way full with water and add five tablespoons of baking soda, one teaspoon of dish soap, and several drops of washable paint. Mix the materials together, put the cup on the ground, and form a mound of dirt or snow around the cup to just below its rim. Now comes the fun! Add one cup of vinegar and watch the lava erupt down the side of the mound. You can add vinegar a number of times until you need to add the base ingredients again. 

Science skills used and branch of science examined: creating a chemical reaction and geology. 

Balance Building

Pick uneven or unstable objects such as cards, paper cups, or rocks and challenge your kids to build as high as they can or in various shapes. 

Science skills used: problem-solving 

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Static Fun

Learning about positive and negative charges is pure fun when playing with a balloon. Have your child rub an inflated balloon against their hair and see what they can stick it on or pick up. Can it stick to a wall or pick up pieces of confetti or flakes of pepper? 

Science branch examined: electric charge 

While it may seem that weeks away from school may be a recipe for falling behind on their education, there are so many opportunities for your kids to keep active and to keep learning. Stay safe, stay well, and stay active. 

Over 200 more activities for kids to do at home

Over the years we’ve published many articles with activity ideas for families to do at home. Here are 200+ of our favourite ideas from the Active for Life archives: