What are fun activities to keep the kids entertained?
It’s critical to prioritize family activities in a world where most of us spend a lot of time staring at screens rather than communicating in meaningful ways. Studies have demonstrated that the regular practice of eating dinner together as a family has a positive impact on the kids’ emotional, cognitive, and even physical growth.
Imagine how much more could be done if you engaged in regular, different activities that will also strengthen your family bonds and bring you all closer together and enhance mental wellbeing.
++I did not include video games, community events, intramural sports, or fitness centers. I kept my ideas more on stress reduction and giving everyone a brain break and simply having fun.
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The family activities listed below are an easy way to start to build ideas of things to do with children. You can do these family activities at home or on the road. Some are great ideas for a rainy day, and others are for a sunny day.
1-Baking for kids
Allow everyone to make a joint family baking project of their choice. Trying to keep the healthy baking for kids ‘theme’. Anything delicious and bakeable, such as cookies, cakes, muffins, or pastries, could be used! After that, you all work together as a family to gather the ingredients and prepare a delicious meal that everyone will be proud to have contributed to.
If you have a large family, you could even bake something new every other day until everyone has had a chance to cook their favorite recipes.
2-Gardening
It may be a lot of fun to get into gardening, and it’s a highly useful skill to have. Depending on the space you have, you can start a small vegetable, herb, or flower garden. Here in Korea, space is limited, so we keep ours on the veranda. Everyone can have a small plot where they can grow whatever they like if they have a lot of room.
Growing a garden is a wonderful method to demonstrate to your children the enormous benefits of endurance, patience, and hard work. It’s a great way to build a healthy eating habit and get some fresh air.
3- Story Time
Try acting out a beloved story instead of just reading it to interest the whole family! You’ll all become involved in the story, and you’ll all have a wonderful memory to cherish forever. Extra points if you fully commit to making funny faces or crazy voices.
4- Board Games and more
Sometimes the best family activities are to simply relax and play board games all day. Try inventing some novel rules to spice up the same old games if you want to add a little more. Additionally, you can design your own games, such as themed charades or scavenger hunts, or print a snakes and ladders game you can find online. Play by your own rules and let your creativity run wild.
Our personal favorite is Qwirkle what a great game for 2 or more players. Also, it’s a nice game to play with the missus and enjoy a cold beer, when my son is fast asleep, of course. There are several printable games online for all occasions as well.
5-Making Crafts
Call it Art Therapy! You can do a lot of really entertaining activities with your family, like coloring, collages, making slime, painting, and more. Make sure this is a joyful experience with no negative ideas or critiques because art can be healing. There is no one right approach to creating; all art forms are unique stuff!
6-Dumpling Night
It’s dumpling night! We love dumplings and they are easy to make. All you need to start your own fillings. You can follow any type of Korean dumpling recipe that usually consists of minced pork, garlic, tofu, et. The outer casing can be found at any local Asian market. After that, simply steam or pan-fry and indulge! There is no limit to what you can put inside! Let your little one make the decision. It’s a great part of a healthy diet too.
7-Pillow or Bed Sheet Fort
A pillow castle can be built by an entire family, but one individual can construct a pretty fantastic pillow fort! Build a large pillow fort to hang out in using cardboard boxes, blankets, couch cushions, pillows, and other materials.
8-Watch a Movie
(This is a wonderful supplement to Pillow Fort Day) Settle in with plenty of snacks and finger foods and spend the day watching a movie or series. The best part is the pajamas…stay in them!
9-Learn a Language
Knowing another language is helpful, and learning it is a lot of fun. You can practice with each other, use books and/or online courses, and even attempt to spend the entire day speaking just using that one language!
10-Film the Day
To capture a full day with your family, use your phone or even a GoPro. After that, you can review it and, if you’d like, edit it into an entertaining family film. It will be enjoyable to reflect on the past as time passes and recall the good times you had and your way of life at the time. The downside is the person behind the camera will not be in the film…
11-Dance Party
Create a playlist with all of your favorite music, and then throw a dance party, simply you and your child! Shake out all of your problems by going bonkers and enjoying yourself. Additionally, it will provide you a wonderful exercise. I must admit that we do this a few times a week, usually before bedtime, and it’s great fun. It’s also good for your young one to memorize lyrics.
You don’t need an expensive dance class or anything of that nature. This is the best way to wind down at the end of the day.
12-Yoga/Pilates
Pilates and yoga are great exercises for increasing flexibility and physical activity, speaking of exercises. Start with basic poses and practice them every day until everyone feels completely at ease learning progressively more complicated ones. You can introduce a 5-minute yoga for kids and calming yoga for kids.
These workouts can be a fantastic method to incorporate a healthy body and mind into their daily routines, but you should never overdo them. If you’re new, this website might be beneficial to you.
13-Picnic
Depending on the circumstances, this could happen indoors or outside. Pillows, blankets, snacks, and food should be packed. Then set up a charming little picnic area on your lawn or residence! A traditional formal supper at a table is significantly less relaxing than a picnic, which is always a lot of fun.
Or if you’re in one of these major cities you can find great places to lay your blankets down on the grass. If you’re ever in Seoul, contact me, I know plenty of great places to relax and have a little picnic.
14-Gift cards or letters
For soldiers serving abroad and elderly residents of nursing homes, letters and cards matter a lot. Send out some handwritten cards with cheery sentiments or thoughtful letters to nursing homes and military sites. This is a wonderful method to uplift spirits and show love to someone who might be feeling down and alone.
15 – Invent A Story
There are many ways to accomplish this. Use a whiteboard or chalkboard to add words as each person adds one word at a time. One can also be written in its entirety and placed on paper that can be bound into a homemade book.
If you need a spark to get your creative juices flowing, think as a kid, when you were your son’s age, what made your eyes sparkle, and go with it. It’s not rocket science! Creative writing is awesome when you ask your child to pitch in some crazy ideas.
16- Tie Dye
I’ve personally never done this, but I know several people who have. Tie-dyeing is a lot of fun and a fantastic way to express creativity! There are countless ways to tie and dye garments, and you can tie-dye almost any item of clothing.
17-Learn How to Sew
A sewing skill is always useful at some point. Even the difference between an embarrassing scenario and a simple, quick fix can be made by learning how to sew on a button. In case of future fashion emergencies, it’s also a good idea to know some basic stitches.
This one depends on the age of your little guy, or girl. You don’t want them to injure themselves, so having mom or dad around is a must.
18-Build Models
More on the ‘old school’ side of family activities…
Order a model of a robot, automobile, airplane, or other object and construct it as a family. Building models is a fantastic method to understand how things fit together and how to collaborate with others. I’ve created and built countless vehicles and others with my son. It’s so much fun, and some take several hours or days to complete.
19-Check Out Old Photo Albums
Learning about family history is a great way to keep memories and traditions alive. Great grandma’s cookie recipe will mean that much more if your kids have a face-to-face with the stories. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and they also preserve the memories of the past.
This one is dear to me, as my family and friends are on the other side of the planet, so I’m often reminiscing about old times when I open up our old albums. It’s a good way to teach my son about his ex-pat and his past.
20-Make A Scrapbook With New Photos
To make your memories for your family’s future, take pictures and add them to a new album! You can even try out scrapbooking to make it even more meaningful and organized. Everyone can fill out a page in their own style and write their own little memory notes next to each picture.
Honestly, this is more my wife’s strong point, but I do help with cutting about the edges if needed.
21-Make a Life Size Drawing
Have a person lie down on a large piece of poster board. After that, you can make a template by tracing all over their body. Everyone can then collaborate to complete the template and create a life-sized drawing of the family member after it is finished.
We’ve created somewhat of a life-size drawing, as the paper was not long enough for me but just the right size for my son.
22-Karaoke
Making karaoke a family event will undoubtedly result in much laughter. Even have a competition for the silliest song/voice combination. Extra points for dance that interprets! You can play this one as you want. We usually put on some songs and dance around (like in #11) and sing. We sometimes use a handheld mic for extra Oomph!
23-Hunting 4-leaf clovers
We enjoy the great outdoors and hunting for 4 leave clovers or bugs are great options to boost emotional wellness in all the family members. Although 3-leafed clovers are quite uncommon, 4-leaf clovers are 1 in 10,000. Finding some in the backyard is a fun way to kill time!
It’s always fascinating and wonderful to find them. Alternatively, you may go looking for molehills, spider webs, or dandelion seeds, or linking to #24 on the list…BUG hunting!
24-bug hunting
This is going to work well with a boy. You can purchase a simple plastic aquarium with some tweezers and go out and flip over rocks, dig in the ground, or my favorite dip your toes at the local stream and look around for creatures to collect and identify.
Depending on everyone’s physical health, you can make this part of a weekly nature walk as well. Here’s a cool article about bug activities! Read on…
25-Youtube Online Tutorial
Social media is all around us, so we can use it for good things. It’s the perfect way to learn new things in your free time.
This might be anything from crafting a scarf out of yarn to designing cakes! Find a good beginner’s video, and if you have the necessary materials, give it a try! Seeing how your finished work stacks up against the videos can be a lot of fun. One large project can be completed as a team effort, or each family member can work on a smaller project.
This is a fantastic approach to observing the various ways that one can do the same task. Take advantage of this chance to assist your children in understanding the value of being unique and how fantastic it is that everyone is unique! We used this method to make amazing paper planes as well as origami.
26-Jump in Puddles and Sing in the Rain
One of the best outdoor activities you can do on a gloomy day. Rain is typically a reason to stay inside, but playing in the mud and stomping in puddles can be a lot of fun. Just make sure the weather is not too chilly and that there isn’t any nearby lightning. Bring your phone with you and record what’s happening.
I’ve got a few videos of my son and I getting soaked during the monsoon season. Come on…just do it. It’s an excellent way to build memories.
27-Scavenger Hunt
Scavenger hunts are fantastic exercises for the mind and body. Typically done around Easter time with eggs and candies. There are other methods to organize a scavenger hunt as well! It can be themed in terms of color, size, space, and more!
If you have older children, set a time restriction; if you have younger children, make sure they can have fun without feeling under too much pressure to “win.” The focus of family outings and activities should be fun! And if you have a single child, it’s more work and less exciting, so that’s why you should invite some friends to take part.
28- Paint Rocks
Have everyone go outdoors and find a cool rock. Your local stream, as previously mentioned, will have an abundance of smooth rocks to paint on. You can all then use your imaginations to imagine the appearance of your rock, you can paint it to take on that appearance. For instance, you could paint legs, eyes, and spots on a lumpy rock to make it resemble a toad, just like a genuine toad! You could even call this a form of therapy.
It doesn’t take much time to find good rocks to incorporate into this idea too.
29-Quiet Moment(Finally)
The youngsters may play independently, ponder, and offer their parents a respite during quiet time.
- Puzzles
- Word search
- Reading
- Educational worksheets
- Extra chores
- Write into their Gratitude Journal at the end of the day
Family activities offer fantastic chances to strengthen relationships and make unforgettable experiences with your children. Make sure that nothing is a competition and that everyone may enjoy themselves. These are activities that the whole family will enjoy if you just use your imagination and have fun with it. Remember..They are only young once!
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