Half Pint Peeps
Parenting, Kids, and mom life. All about life with littles. Free ideas to help your child develop in life. Get tips and tricks for raising kids.
Popsicle stick crafts are a fun way to entertain the kids all summer long. You can either purchase craft sticks at your local Michaels, or rinse and hang onto the seemingly endless supply of sticks from all the popsicles your kids consume. Either way, they’ll have a ton of fun making any of the following popsicle stick crafts!
Ever tried homemade bath bombs for kids? Why? Kids love bath time, and they love it even more when you add fun things to it. Try adding not only waterproof toys or bubbles, but homemade bath bombs too!
Indoor gross motor skills activities for kids are the best way to help your toddler’s or preschooler’s physical development–even when you have to be inside the house. When you can’t spend time at the park or allow your child to play outdoors with friends, these indoor activities can help fill the void.
Gross motor skills are those that control big movements of the body’s largest muscles, like arms, legs and core. Kids need developed gross motor skills for everything they do at home or at school. Kids who have trouble with these skills have trouble doing things like running, jumping and climbing.
The activities and games you play with your kids to improve their gross motor skills can be surprisingly simple! And simple means they don’t require a lot of planning or time. Just have fun with them, because your kids definitely will.
Before you go, check out these suggested toddler games to help improve coordination.
Virtual sleepover ideas are a great idea in today’s COVID-19 world. For any of those times when you can’t host an in-person sleepover for your kids, a virtual sleepover is the next best thing. Here are some ideas to help you throw an unforgettable virtual sleepover!
Before the day of your sleepover, sit down with your kids and decide on a theme for the party. This isn’t absolutely necessary, but it does help to tie everything together. A theme also helps provide even more ideas for a fun night. With your theme as inspiration, send out pre-sleepover good bags to your virtual guests. The goodie bag helps everyone feel like they still get to do everything together, even if they’re apart. Here are some ideas:
A sleepover is more fun with games and activities everyone can enjoy. It may be trickier to pull off virtually, but it can be done. Here are some ideas to inspire your virtual sleepover activities:
Whatever you do for your kids’ online sleepover, allow time for them to just sit and talk and catch up with each other. That may actually end up being the biggest hit of the night!
There are a lot more ways to enjoy the night during a sleepover–even if it’s virtual:
There are so many things you can do. Have fun!
Indoor scavenger hunts for kids are fun, interesting activities you can do when you have bored kids but need to stay inside. It really is not hard to set up an indoor scavenger hunt, and there are so many ways to do it. Take a look at the following ideas to get you started!
Sometimes circumstances such as bad weather or illness require that we keep the kids inside. And we all know that kids seem to get bored quickly, especially when they’re stuck inside! So having an arsenal of fun, educational and engaging things for the kids to do is important for everyone in the family. Here are some ideas for indoor scavenger hunts for the kids.
Do your kids enjoy puzzles? It’s easy to use a puzzle they already enjoy to build a scavenger hunt. Put the puzzle together yourself, write a clue on the backside, and take it apart again. The kids have to work together on the puzzle for their first clue. Or create your own puzzle clues by cutting written clues into pieces that the kids need to put together to solve.
Do your kids own sets of small plastic dinosaurs, or even bugs or army guys? Gather a collection of these items and hide them around the house with a clue to find the next one. A fun idea is to write or print the clues very small so that the kids need a magnifying glass to read them.
One way to make the kids’ daily tasks more fun is to include them in a scavenger hunt. For example, if practicing the piano is a challenge, require your child to play a certain song or practice for 10 minutes to receive a clue.
Kids who love reading love spelling scavenger hunts! Use handwritten letters or small plastic letters for this idea. Decide on words for the kids to spell, and hide the letters for the words around the house for them to find.
When stuck inside, your child may feel sad about missing grandparents, teachers, or other loved ones. Get these loved ones in on the scavenger hunt fun! Prepare a hunt that requires the kids to video chat with a loved one or friend for each clue. They’ll love it!
Need more ideas for bored kids? Try making your own “I’m bored” jar full of fun activities!
When you need to busy your kids’ hands and their brains, one way to do just that is to let them conduct kids science experiments. Fun activities that also challenge kids to really think are the activities that promise to entertain and educate all at once. And those are the best kinds of activities for kids! Here are some fun and thought-provoking science experiments to challenge your kids.
A lot of us may not think about kids science experiments until it’s time to come up with a project for the school science fair. If that’s you, I get it! But luckily for both of us, I’ve got a list of science fair project ideas to help you and your kids plan out the perfect one. There’s always the ever-popular flowing volcano!
For younger kids, these 5-minute science experiments may be just the perfect diversion for bored minds. They’re easy to do, but yield some seriously cool results! Grab some empty toilet paper rolls, gummy bears and food coloring–you’re going to need it all.
Got a bored and hungry kid on your hands? It’s time to break out the science experiments you can eat! There are tons of fun projects on this list, and all of them yield edible results. Take a look, because I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised!
I’m including slime as a DIY science experiment, because kids love it SO much. Making slime gives kids a chance to learn about chemical reactions. For younger kids who may be tempted to eat what they make, try slime recipes you can eat.
When you have time at home together, science experiments are fun for both kids and parents. It’s also a great idea to involve the kids in home repairs and projects. Show them the “science” behind what you’re doing–nothing like quality time spent working on a project together!