Are you looking for a giant list of indoor activities for kids that includes fun things for kids to do at home? These fun ideas for kids make a great boredom buster for rainy days or even weekends.
The next time your child says, “I’m bored” tell them to look at the list for some inspiration on fun things for kids to do. To make it even more helpful, I’ve added a free printable list of indoor activities for kids so that you can easily print it and place it on your refrigerator.
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Indoor activities for kids
I have a wonderful list of Fun Indoor Activities For Kids Near Me too (and by near me, I mean activities that are near everyone. Those activities generally surround all of us in our local cities.)
This indoor activity list is more geared towards activities to do at home. They will encourage creativity and play. It will get children’s bodies moving and stimulate their minds. Some will even work on those fine motor skills and gross motor skills too.
How many times have your children come up to you and told you that they were bored? Yep, happens to the best of us. With time, I’ve learned that boredom is actually good for kids. But with a world that is going through changes, I also think mental health is important and when kids aren’t able to do things they normally do… we need to get creative.
We need a good boredom buster like some indoor game ideas for a rainy day to keep the kids busy.
Fun indoor activities for kids
These are just some starter ideas for inside activities for kids to get your think-tank working. Involve the kiddos in the process too so that they can be a part of deciding what activities and experiments they’re wanting to do for the day.
If you plan well, you could easily do 2-3 of these per day and provide your children with hours upon hours of fun!
Many of our favorite outdoor kids’ activities can be done indoors.
- Make alphabet crafts with my printable alphabet letter crafts activity.
- Do indoor art activities.
- Create sensory bins with your child’s toys
- Make Oobleck with this Bartholomew and the Oobleeck recipe
- Paint a watercolor palette and learn more about colors.
- Do Painting activities. Learn more about what painting for kids looks like at different ages.
- Make Edible Finger Paint and then paint with it.
- Make slime. Learn how to make slime at home. We have so many slime recipe’s for you to try including: Fluffy Slime, Butter Slime, No Glue Slime Recipe, and Rainbow Slime. And, if for some reason you have a slime mishap, I have you covered! Learn How To Get Slime Out Of Hair and How To Remove Slime From Clothes.
- Make Cloud Dough
- Build an obstacle course in your living room.
- Make Rainbow Rice
- Make Muddy Oobleck
- Bake with mom or dad.
- Make ‘snow’. Learn how to make snow
- Color
- Use Look and find books.
- Read a chapter book aloud. See my post on Nightly Reading Out Loud Benefits
- Play with Lego
- Build Puzzles
- Bounce a ball
- Write in a journal.
- Try making a Fall cooked playdough recipe
- Play with play trays
- Do Yoga
- Listen to music
- Work on shapes with this Contact Paper Resist Painting Activity
- Play Bingo using my free Printable Bingo Cards for Kids.
- Tell fairytales
- Make a sensory bottle using this Simple Glitter Sensory Bottle Tutorial (You can add an alphabet twist to it like I did here: Alphabet Sensory Bottles DIY)
- Make a Rainbow Rice Sensory Bin (Use my tutorial on How to make colored rice – Rainbow Rice)
- Paint with colored ice
- Print out educational activities (I have so many free Free Printable Packs too.)
- Play with a Water Beads Sensory Bin.
- Try the Magic Milk Experiment.
- Do some Paper Towel Painting
- Make crayon names using old crayons. You can check out my tutorial on How To Make Crayon Names.
- Try out the Melted Crayon Art Activity
- Look through some wordless books and tell a story.
- Do some hidden name art.
- Do an Egg Hunt at home.
- Family movie time
- Play with blocks
- Do an Indoor chalk activity
- Blow bubbles. Learn how to make homemade bubbles.
- Plant a flower in a flower pot.
- Have a hula hoop competition
- Play Would You Rather?
- Try out Spin Painting for kids
- Play with stickers
- Make lemonade
- Play Uno
- Play dress up.
- Do a Blindfolded rice hunt.
- Play with play dough using my homemade play dough recipe.
- Make ice cream in a bag
- Create Salt Crystals
- Play with magnetic blocks (this is one of our favorite indoor activities for kids.)
- Make a fizzing rainbow
- Try out this cool Walking Water Experiment
- Make a volcano – See the Volcano science experiment
- Play with dress up paper dolls
- Paint Rocks
- Do some Fingerprint art
- Have some free play time.
- Play thumb war
- Practice cutting paper with the Printable preschool cutting box printable
- Try out this awesome Water In A Bag Pencil Experiment
- Make a Lava lamp using Lava Lamp Experiment tutorial.
- Make Flashlight shadows
- Go alphabet fishing
- Make rainbow oobleck. See the Recipe For Oobleck Rainbow here.
- Do some Raised salt painting
- Sing
- Make a playdough rainbow.
- Play a musical instrument
- Play with Lego Dots‘
- Try out the bean in a bag science experiment
- Start reading a childrens book series.
- Make chocolate playdough.
- Play with shaving cream like we did in the alphabet shaving cream activity.
- Make the Rainbow Bubble Foam Recipe for a sensory fun activity.
- Play with rainbow spaghetti.
- Make kinetic sand at home. Use this DIY Kinetic Sand Recipe (easy and kid-safe!)
- Play with fizzing ice.
- Do the elephant toothpaste science experiment.
- Make recycled paper.
- Create tie dye t-shirts using Sharpie’s.
- Do some action art with marble painting.
- Try Symmetry Painting for kids.
- Do a sink or float activity.
- Make a rain cloud in a jar.
- Make shrinky dinks
- Do Alphabet Activities for Kids.
- Try out the Skittles rainbow science experiment.
- Paint using the Mess-free painting technique
- Make Coffee Filter Butterflies
- Do a Puzzle hunt
- Tell each other jokes. We have a list of jokes for you try out including: Knock Knock Jokes For Kids, Funny Kids Jokes, and 25 Funny Jokes For Kids)
- Learn to draw with learn to draw books
- Make some Recycled Crafts
- Play indoor dodgeball.
- Create a virtual book club at home.
- Bring foam blocks in the bath tub with you
- Do some Dot Painting
- Play I Spy at home. “I spy with my eye something red…”
- Bath a baby doll (see my list of Baby Doll Bath Toys For Toddlers)
- Do art lessons online.
- Wash your toys in a sensory bin
- Build up Lego sets.
- Play video games together.
- Paint craft pumpkins.
- Try the egg drop experiment
- Put on a puppet show
- Have a make your own pizza night
- Play Dominos
- Star in your own play.
List of indoor games
Looking for some These are some fun games to play indoors take the outdoor fun indoors!
- Catch
- Jump rope
- Play Hopscotch with a hopscotch rug.
- Play a game of Simon Says
- Hide + Seek
- Freeze Dance
- Charades
- Family board games. If you need some fun kids board game recommendations, check out the best board games for families to play together and my favorite toddler board games. Play games for kids that are age appropriate.
Now that you’ve read through the giant list of indoor activities for kids, I hope you felt inspired. Don’t forget to print the printable list of activities so that you and the kids can mark them off as you do them!
It can even be a fun experiment to do as a family to see if you can get them all done.
I also suggest you work with your child’s natural interests. If they enjoy painting, choose a painting activity. Making slime is one of my daughter’s favorite indoor activities for kids. so she often will choose to do that.
Once you get the printable, you’ll also see that I’ve included a page that has clickable links so you can easily find the corresponding activity. (I’m trying to make this as simple as possible for you, moms and dads!)
WHERE TO GET THE PRINTABLE PAGE
GET THE INDOOR ACTIVITIES PRINTABLE HERE
Many of these indoor kid’s activities would also be fun activities for kids at school too, especially during those rainy days.
This post was originally published on: March 15, 2020 and updated on December 25, 2021.
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