Moms generally get a mini heartache at the utterance of the term: vacations! At best, they can picture a bored, crabby child, who’s either glued to the television or the latest game on his/her PlayStation.
The best and probably the most efficient way to keep boredom away from the kids’ mind would be to involve them in kids activities in their spare time categorized in four different zones: physical, mental, creative and intellectual. It’s quite a task for moms to keep kids activities which include crafts for kids phased out for the optimum usage of time.
While making arts and crafts for kids out of waste is the usual pass time for kids, try slotting these into categories for better utilisation of their vacation. The categories have a way of making more activities for children than the typical fun and games affair.
Keep Your Kids Entertained With These 20 Fun Activities
Physical Activities
Most often, kids are either glued to the television sets or their gadgets during their vacations. Get kids to move outdoors and ask them to help in mowing the lawn or to build a special camp area for another set of fun activities for kids. While some kids can help their mother with laundry and baking, few opt to get involved in children activities like building a tent out of an old sheet can help them get creative.
Add in a few more attractions like the list below:
1. Bike Or Cycle Rides
Kids activities can start with starting to learn to ride a bike or cycle and go on biking trails or nearby park.
2. Make Cleaning A Part Of Fun Activities
Getting kids to clear the clutter from their room and arranging their books can be fun if you get a group of children involved.
3. Organizing A Camp Activity For Kids
Help create a tent for a nocturnal stargazing activity, and elders can help children prepare a barbeque to make the children activities eventful.
4. Treasure Hunt
Creating a scavenger hunt within the house to help find some paraphernalia that parents were so far hunting. This is a significant part of the fun activities for kids where they learn to enjoy doing a physical as well as a menial task.
5. Going To The Market With Parents
Helping purchase groceries with the parents. Parents can take their kids along while doing grocery shopping to teach them the art of buying necessary household items along with the knowledge of keeping track of money. Grocery shopping helps kids choose the vegetables and healthy snacks they would like and they would also learn to calculate the money to be given and taken during shopping.
6. Gardening
Fun activities for kids can include gardening. Elders can turn their backyard into a mini garden with the help of the kids. Since gardening includes the use of heavy equipment, kids can take small containers and start with planting herbs in broken coffee mugs or old unused containers. They can turn the windowsill into a small herb garden.
7. Organise A Garden Sale And Learn To Sell Baked Cookies
Here kids can sell their unused toys at a cheaper price. This helps kids learn about handling monetary transactions and also teaches them the art of sharing and helping others.
Parents enjoying children’s activities help kids learn many things they may not like initially but will later enjoy the same.
Mental Activities
Several kids activities can keep them occupied mentally.
8. Inculcate Reading Habits
Books can be arranged in alphabetical order and also can be segregated as per their types like a Storybook, Origami craft book, Puzzle book etc. The book arrangement can be made in this way with an added attraction so that they can easily choose a book from their bookshelf to be read aloud to the family and improve their reading habits. A book club activity can be started where kids can share their books with others and this will teach them the art of sharing and maintaining the books.
9. Arts And Crafts For Kids
Try paper-Mache, tie-and-dye, calligraphy, and many more. A lot of these could involve activities like paper crafts for kids which include creating a wind chime, or building a mini aquarium, origami artefacts have become a hit with kids since they allow them to create new objects. Many places have papercraft classes where the kids can learn how to make different kinds of artefacts using paper-like for example, they can create their favourite bird or animal or even greeting card. Check out 5 handmade christmas greeting cards that you can make with your kid here.
10. Puzzles
Parents can also keep some spare time for kids to solve mini jigsaw and fun puzzles to keep them mentally alert. These could vary from mini Sudoku, to ‘find me’ puzzles or mental math equations.
11. Building With Lego
Children activities today are more into creating space ships, robots or cars and all these can easily do with a Lego kit. They have to assemble the given parts as per instructions. They have to use their imagination to assemble the Lego blocks.
All of these fun activities for children will never let your child get bored during their vacation.
Creative Activities
For creatively inclined kids, there is no shortage of options.
12. Cooking
For those who love cooking, kids can learn simple baking dishes with the help of a parent. Homemade cookies, homemade pizza, creating colourful salads and learning to make some summer ales like lemonade and fruit punches could get them going. Planning an outdoor party with friends, preparing for a family outing or bonfire can also help them connect with family and friends.
13. Designing Useful Items
Creating new and handmade pen and pencil stands, lampshades and side racks are some of the other fun arts and crafts-related activities for children.
14. Crafts For Kids
Crafts for kids are excellent as extra-curricular activities. Parents can indulge in different kinds of paper crafts for kids. They can even make puppets and have puppet shows with friends. Girls can opt for beading projects. Kids can collect rocks and paint them as a part of fun activities.
15. Painting
Children can dive into spray-painting on old t-shirts and use them again as new. They can even paint their walls and draw pictures of their favourite cartoon characters to decorate the same.
16. Board Games
Few board games teach children to follow a set of rules for playing, and they also learn to listen to each other during the games. Few games allow kids to be creative by having them create several shapes.
These children activities are always a good idea to keep them engaged during holidays. Apart from enjoying themselves, they also learn something new.
Intellectual Activities
17. Scrapbook
Children activities may include stamp and coin collections. Few kids also like collecting different leaves and so they can make a book with the leaves and write down the information about the same. They can even draw cartoons and make a motion book of the same by drawing the characters in motion in different pages to flip over.
18. Learn About History
Kids interested in historical events can always look out for books in the library or check websites. They can create a history book by collecting data and pictures.
19. Science Games
Nowadays, kids are smart and do not accept anything on face value. They can have fun by experimenting with materials read in books or through school. Few experiments can be done at home with household articles.
20. Math Games
Children can play math games like probability where they can keep a score. They can even make their flashcards. The whole family can join in the games to make it a fun event.
Do give it a special twist and visit an orphanage or a retirement home to make them value people, relations and feelings. Help them create fun things to be distributed to these places. The joy of giving and the art of being grateful can be taught through these activities.
Most kids get bored with monotony. Help them break this using skills that make them use all faculties; physical and mental. While visits to different places can help them garner values and dampen their humane side, make them learn in a fun manner that vacations are times to be spent well with friends, family and society. Besides classes and other hobby activities, make physical games, Pictionary and Bingo merge with activities that involve them in creating crafts with recyclable items for a fun time. These crafts for kids will be easy for you to manage and teach your kids.
Often a kids’ workshop visits the zoo, aquarium. A visit to the national park is an ideal place that kids would love to go to. Make it more interesting by marking off places on a map to visit and make your kids remember how they got there. And if you are worried about your child feeling discomforted during the long travels, you can rely on these home remedies for motion sickness to help your kid make most of her trip. Often lanes and by-lanes are overlooked by kids, thereby making them rather sloppy. Learning newer routes, creating scavenger hunts and visiting places in town can help them in becoming street smart.