Nature Trail Treasure Hunt.
Take a family walk in the nature reserve. Before you set out give each child a bag and a list of items to find in the nature reserve.
2.
Family storymaker.
Give each member of the family a section of a story to make up. For example one person decides on a location where the story takes place, another the time of the day or year, someone else must think of a character and another an action. Decide the order each family member will take a turn. Each family member must make up their part of the story without telling the others. When you are all ready, each family member must tell their part of the story in the order that was decided. You will hear some weird and wonderful tales that will have you in fits of giggles. You can start a new story and swop around the order and each family member gets to try a different part of the story, eg, character, location etc.
3.
The Aviators
Fly paper aeroplanes. Make up your own designs, copy designs from the internet or a book from the library. Use different textures and types of paper. See which paper and style flies the best.
4.
Dirty Play
A bucket of sand (or a sandpit), water, some sticks and some small plastic animals. You will be surprised how long the kids can entertain themselves with these few items. Dinosaur islands, pony castles and seaside landscapes, the kids will only be limited by their imaginations.
5.
Secret Hideout...Sssh, don't tell!
Build a secret hideout using sticks, shrubbery and spare wood (if you have) from the garden and shed. Furnish and decorate with natural materials from the garden like flowers, big leaves and stones. Watch the kids entertain themselves for hours and hope the garden survives it.
6.
Tic-Tac-Toe on the Rocks
Collect some rocks from the garden that can be painted. Paint three rocks with a cross and three rocks with a nought. (Or any picture or colour you like as long as you have two lots of three that look the same). Draw up the tic tac toe lines on your driveway or a washable surface with chalk and play tic-tac-toe (otherwise known as noughts and crosses) with your painted rocks. Reinventing an old game with unusual materials will make it fun for the kids again.
7.
Bottle Cap Games
Collect a whole lot of plastic bottle caps in a variety of colours. Draw alphabet letters, numbers and pictures on the bottle caps. Make sure you have at least two of the same picture on the caps to use for memory games, go fish or snap. Play spelling games, sorting games, counting games. You can even draw a chekers board with chalk on a washable surface and teach them to play checkers.
8.
Zany Zoo
Let the kids turn your living room into a zoo with all their stuffed animals. Appoint a zoo keeper to feed the animals and a vet to care for the sick animals. Make an entrance to the zoo area and admission tickets. They can even set up a snack shop. Let their imaginations go wild!
9.
Bubble fun.
Drop two squirts of dishing washing liquid onto a plate. Run tap water onto the dish washing liquid on the plate to create some bubbles. Put the plate onto a flat surface and let your child blow the bubbles with a straw. Add drops of different colours of food colouring for coloured effects. An apron is a good idea to protect clothes from the food colouring.
10.
Mapping Game
Draw or print out 2 squares each with 9 squares within it on two separate pieces of paper. (Similar to a tic-tac-toe layout but with the squares closed off). Write the numbers 1, 2 and 3 next to each square on the left hand side and a, b and c next to each square across the top. Do this on both pieces of paper. On one of the printouts, draw a simple picture or image in each of the 9 squares. The other square printout must remain blank. The children playing the game are not allowed to see the square with the pictures on before you start playing. Select one of the children to draw the images under the instructions from another child. Ask a child to take a look at the picture in square A1. She must then describe the image to the child who has to draw it in the same square A1 on the printout without the images on. Each child can take a turn to describe a picture in one of the 9 squares (A2, B2 etc) to the child who has to draw what is described to her. Once all 9 images have been drawn compare the original drawings to the new ones drawn by the child under instruction from the others. See how they turn out!
11.
Challenging Creativity
Choose 5 types of craft materials. Make 5 different items by using all 5 craft materials in a completely different way for each item. Make it harder by only selecting 3 types of craft materials. Limiting the number of craft materials you have to use and ensuring that you use all chosen materials for each item can really challenge your creativity and get your imagination going.
12.
Orchestra in the Kitchen
Take out tins, pots, tupperware, wooden spoons and other non breakable items and experiment with sounds in the kitchen. If you have collected glass bottles, fill them with water to different levels, colour with food colouring and gently hit them with a spoon to hear the different sounds that can be made.
13.
Visit the SPCA
Educate your children on cruelty to animals.
14.
Obstacle Course
Put together an obstacle course in the living room or garden using kids furniture items or items that kids are allowed to climb over. Pretend the ground is filled with shark (or crocodile) infested water and you have to get from the start of the obstacle course to the end without putting your foot on the ground.
15.
Arrange a Play Date
Playing at a friends house with different toys and a change of scenery will chase away the cabin fever and the boredom blues very quickly!
16.
Wipe Clean Cream Art
You can create a simple wipe clean drawing surface using a cheap non perfumed tub of aqueous cream and a plastic table or tray. Drop a big dollop of cream onto the plastic table or a tray. Your child can spread and smooth out the cream across the surface. She can then doodle pictures and patterns using her fingers in the aqueous cream on the surface. To draw a new picture simply smooth out the old one with your hand.
17.
Visit to the Library
If you haven't yet discovered the wide choice of books in your local library, now is the time. Choose story books, books on science experiments you can do at home and arts and craft books that show you how to make items using recyclable or household items. Quite a few of the libraries offer a kids reading and activity morning once a week in the school holidays. Phone your local library and check the day and time for this.
18.
Paper Mache
Mix two parts water to 1 part flour. Add a tablespoon of salt if you live in a humid area to prevent mold. Tear off strips of newspaper and dip them into the mixture. Make a treasure island or dinosaur landscape with volcano on a piece of board or cover a blown up balloon and make funny monster faces, a big bird or spider. You can use empty toilet rolls, small boxes and plastic bottles or lids to help shape the art work. You will find idea on the internet or in a book from your local library. This can get quite messy so make sure you do this in an easy to clean area. Leave to dry for a couple of days and then paint.
19.
Weird and Wonderful Creatures
Give each child a part of an animal to draw on a piece of paper. For example, one child draws a head, another a neck, another a body and another some legs. They can select any animal they like. They must not tell the other children what type of animal body part they have decided on and they must not be allowed to see each others drawings until everyone has finished. Cut out all the drawings and paste together to see what weird and wonderful creature they have designed together.
20.
Chalk Town.
Give the kids a box of chalk and ask them to draw a village on the drive way or somewhere you can wash the chalk off easily with a hose pipe. When they are finished they can play with their toy cars on the streets they have drawn and even include any plastic people they may have lying around. You can help them by suggesting buildings for them to draw, such as a library, a church, a school, shops and houses. Take a picture before you wash it off for your children to remember what they had created.
21.
Skyscraper
Build the tallest tower you can out of anything you find in the house is not breakable of course.
22.
Magazine Collage Storybook
Cut out pictures from old magazines and create a story by pasting them into a scrap book. You can make your own book by stapling or binding pieces of paper together with string and a punch hole.
23.
Crazy Toy Shop
Get an assortment of little things, like paperclips, toilet paper tubes, napkins, bottle tops, ice cream sticks, egg boxes etc. Ask the kids to make some unique and crazy toys with them. Then let them name all their toys, put a price on them and set up a pretend toy shop.
24.
Home movie theatre
Set up your tv room to look like a movie theatre on family DVD night. Make a poster of the movie showing that night and write the cost of admission on it. Make admission tickets, set up chairs in a row and assign seat numbers to each family member. Make a pop corn and drinks stand and line all the family members up to put in their orders. Let one child flick the lights when the movie is going to start and shine a few flashlights up and down from floor to ceiling when the lights of off for a dramatic and entertaining effect before the movie starts.
25.
Visit a museum
If you have been to the museum before and you know what exhibits they have, or you are able to phone for a list or copy a list from the internet, then you can play relic hunter. The children have to locate and tick off the items on the list. If you have photos from a previous visit, print out and attach them to the list to make it easier to find the items. If you haven't visited the museum before, take photos of some items your children enjoy the most (if you are permitted to take pictures). When you get home print out the pictures for the children. They can pretend they are relic hunters with mysterious treasure and they have to find out more about the history of the treasure. Help them using books or the internet to find out more about their treasures. This makes learning and researching a lot more fun.
26.
Skittles
Save some plastic drinks bottles (about 10) and fill them half way with sand. Set them up and knock em down with a ball. For added entertainment you can paint them or draw funny faces on them with a permanent marker.
27.
Rubber Band Art
Hammer nails into a wooden board in rows and columns with enough space to spread them equally around the board. Purchase a packet of coloured elastic bands. Make patterns by looping the elastic bands around the nails. Younger children will need to be supervised on this one to avoid finger piercing and thumb bashing.
28.
Pizza A La Kids
Play Pizza Restaurant. You will need at least 3 people. One to be a chef, one to be a waiter or waitress and one to be a customer. The aim of the game other than having fun is to test the kids listening skills. The customer places an order for a pizza with the waitress and the waitress has to tell the chef all the items that the customer requires on his or her pizza. Play the game at lunch or dinner time and make real pizzas. You can make it more fun by being a difficult or impatient customer, or the waitress can read the order back wrong to the customer to make it entertaining. Just like real life!
29.
Play Dough
Make your own play dough. Mold into a bowl or use cookie cutters to make different shapes. Bake in the oven to set and paint once cooled.
30.
Mystery Box
Cut a whole in the side of a box, big enough for your child to fit a hand through. A shoe box is ideal. Place mystery items in the box without the child seeing what it is. The child must feel the item through the hole in the box and try to guess what it is.
31.
Reverse Hide 'n Seek
Only one person hides and the rest are the seekers. When a seeker finds the person in hiding, they hide too, in the same place. Eventually all the seekers will be huddled up together with the original hiding person until the last seeker finds them. Staying quiet all huddled up together is quite a challenge for the kids!
32.
French Skipping
You need an elastic with a width of about 2cm and 3 metres in length. Tie the two ends together. Two children stand inside the loop and stretch the elastic band taught around their ankles. The third child hops and jumps in and out of the elastic singing appropriate rhymes. The elastic is raised higher and higher in each round to make it more challenging.
33.
Bake cookies
Using this easy cookie dough recipe for kids make up some cookie dough which can be shaped easily using cookie cutters. Have fun decorating the shapes together with your favourite toppings.
34.
Make your own paint
Using this easy finger paint recipe make your own paint and enjoy a finger painting activity together.
35.
Holiday activity book memorablia
Take a photo of each activity your family does in the holidays. At the end of the school holidays print out the photos and let the kids make a book of their favourite holiday activities. They can take the book with them on their first day back at school to show all their class mates what they got up to in the holidays.
This internet site provides information of a general nature and is designed for educational purposes only. If you have any concerns about your own health or the health of your child, you should always consult with a doctor or other healthcare professional. Kidzworld.co.za provides this site as a directory for infant and child related products and services. Kidzworld.co.za does not in any way endorse or recommend any of the listings found within its site, and cannot be held responsible or liable in any way for your dealings with them. Please review the Terms of Use before using this site. Your use of the site indicates your agreement to be bound by the terms of use.
