Indoor Activities for Children
Board Games, Paper and Pencil Games, Craft and other Rainy Day Fun
Having some indoor activities on hand keeps kids occupied on rainy days, and can greatly reduce time spent in front of the television or computer.
Extended periods of bad weather can stretch the patience of children and parents alike. There are a variety of indoor sporting activities available, but it is also possible to have fun together at home with a little planning and minimal expense. Some travel games can also be used to play at home.
Board Games and Card Games for Children
There is a wide variety of board games available suiting all sorts of ages, abilities and interests. Some older children will enjoy a long-term game such as Monopoly, Scrabble or chess or even a large jigsaw. Younger and more active children will be more likely to remain entertained with a several shorter games.
When playing with older and younger children together, allow the older child to keep score as an additional challenge for them.
Art and Craft Activities
Many children enjoy being creative and can be simply entertained by paper, glue, stickers and a variety of pencils, textas, crayons and pens. Gel pens and glitter glue don’t result in too much mess and can be used to decorate pictures. Keep a plastic, felt-backed table cloth handy to put over the dining room table or get some large place mats or messy mats to make clean-up easier.
Oil pastel crayons give bright colours and watercolour pencils allow older children to ‘paint’ without the risk of spillages. Cheap scrapbooking paper can provide hours of entertainment for infants/primary school-aged children who enjoy cutting and pasting. Keep a small supply of old magazines for children to cut pictures from.
Paper and Pencil Games
- Squares Game. Draw a grid of dots, 5 down by 5 across (expand for a longer game). Each player takes turns connecting two dots, either horizontally or vertically (not diagonally). If the player completes the fourth side of a square, they put their initials inside the square and get another turn. The player with the most squares at the end of the game is the winner.
- Hangman. Choose a word and draw a series of dashes on a page, one for each letter. The other player has to guess the word by suggesting letters. If the letter is in the word, it is written over all corresponding dashes. If the guess is incorrect, a head is drawn. To win, the word must be guessed before the entire person (head, body, arms, legs, feet) and gallows (vertical line, horizontal line to make a right angle at the top, line down to connect with the top of the head) are drawn.
- Categories Game. Choose five categories (eg boy’s name, country, food, animal, colour) and list them in five columns across a page. Take turns picking a letter of the alphabet and race to be the first person to be able to think of a word for each category starting with that letter. Alternatively, think of a word (eg ‘chair’) and race to complete each column with an item starting with each letter of the chosen word (ie C, H, A, I, R).
Active Games
- Musical Freeze/Statues Game. Play a CD and have everyone dance and move around the room. When the music stops, everyone has to freeze in place. Anyone who moves before the music starts again is out.
- Build a fort. Gather together blankets and some supplies and convert the dining room table or lounge chairs into a fort. Some children can entertain themselves all day building and equipping their new ‘home’ and are generally happy to be served snacks and lunch there.
- Hide and seek. It is best to make sure at the outset that children understand if there are areas they are not allowed to use as hiding spaces (eg bathroom, laundry). Once they understand which areas are out of bounds, they can take turns counting then trying to find each other.
Related articles: Book review: Storybook Art; Word Games
