Activities for Kids

How to Keep Your Kids Entertained While Camping

March 30, 2021 by Jessica Moore Leave a Comment

Growing up with the Rockies in our backyard, camping was an annual tradition in our family. I have nothing but fond memories of those trips and time spent with my family… bugs, bites, leech-infested lakes, and everything else between. It’s been many years since we last went camping and I’ve been wanting to plan a trip for my own family to experience. It’s a time to disconnect from work and devices and connect with each other instead. As I’ve been pulling thoughts together for our first camping adventure, here are some camping activities for kids I’ve found for keeping little ones entertained during downtime.

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Camping Activities For Kids

Party Animals

Have a party of a time searching for animal tracks as a family. Not only will you be out hiking on your hunt but you can also learn a lot about the animals and nature. Who knows… you might even meet a few of the animals along the way. Read more animal tracking tips from Learn Create Love. You can also find an animal track guide here.

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Fire Up Some Grub!

Gather all your Little Chefs around the fire and learn to cook some super yummy and surprisingly easy recipes together. The Dating Divas share a list of kid-friendly recipes that you can fire up in no time at all and that will have you ALL going back for more!

Stick It To Me

Decorate your own walking sticks. All you need are acrylic paints, string, beads, and feathers. After you’ve finished decorating and the paint has dried, take your sticks on a hike. Find the crafting instructions here.

Happy Hunting

Go on a nature scavenger hunt. An activity all ages can enjoy, you can either do the hunt as a group or have everyone fend for themselves. Get the free scavenger hunt list here. Happy hunting!

The Family That Sings Together…

Sing campfire songs together as a family. It might be a bit of a battle at first with those resistant singers, but it’s worth the “treble.” You can find a great list of campfire songs here.

Story Time!!

One of my favorite ways to imagine up a story is with Rory’s Story Cubes. To play the game, you roll some special dice with themed images on each die face. You must then create a story using the images you rolled. Have fun on your next campout making your own version of Rory’s Story Cubes by creating Story Stones. Have fun painting your own images and then play the game later around the fire as a family. I can hardly wait!

Seek It!

Spend a lazy afternoon in your campground battling it out over Seek It. Seek It is a simple yet addictive game the whole family will love. The objective is to find the only matching symbol between your card and the card in the center and then to yell out the match before your opponents. If your card wins a round, it’s added to the center pile and becomes the next card everyone matches to. The first to run out of cards, wins! Find the Happy Camper set and many more from MC Squared.

Geocaching

If you’d like to give your hiking a bit more purpose, give geocaching a try. Geocaching is basically a scavenger hunt on steroids. To play, hunters use a GPS to hide and seek packages referred to as “geocaches” or “caches”. Learn more about how to participate from Geocaching.com.

I hope this list of camping activities for kids helps you out! If you’re looking for more camping hacks, check out my post on survival skills for camping with kids.

Indoor Gross Motor Skills Activities For Kids

June 10, 2020 by Jessica Moore Leave a Comment

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.

Indoor Gross Motor Skills Activities For Kids

Gross Motor Skills And Why They Matter

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.

Simple Activities And Games To Improve Gross Motor Skills

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.

Gross Motor Skill Activities

How many times did you pretend the floor was hot lava when you were growing up? This is a great game for indoor gross motor skills activities, and kids love it!
An indoor scavenger hunt is another great activity. Here are some suggestions!
Set up a large basket or plastic bin as a target, and have your child try to throw tennis balls into the target from varying distances.

Grab some squares of colored paper and lay a track around the house for your child to follow. Try different ways of getting between squares, such as hopping on one foot or jumping like a frog.
A simple jumping competition is fun for the whole family. See who jumps the farthest!
Cut a cardboard box to make one big flat panel. Use a marker to draw a hopscotch game on the cardboard. After you play, save it for next time there’s a rainy day!

Additional Gross Motor Activities for Kids

Have a little indoor basketball with crumpled paper {no balls in the house!}.
Create a “balance beam” with a couple of 2x4s or whatever you’ve got. My kids love theirs.
Try some yoga together. Kids love this, and it definitely improves gross motor skills.

Before you go, check out these suggested toddler games to help improve coordination.

Virtual Sleepover Ideas For Kids

May 27, 2020 by Jessica Moore Leave a Comment

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!

Virtual Sleepover Ideas

Pre-Sleepover Goodies

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:

Matching pajamas that go with the sleepover theme {if budget allows}
Bags of popcorn
Movie theater candy
Bottled water, soda, or chocolate milk
A special pillowcase to remember the evening
Sleep masks and comfy socks {find these at Dollar Tree!}

Virtual Games & Activities

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:

Assign a color to each guest, and have them wear pajamas in that color
Ask each guest to model their color theme with pajamas and fun props
Watch a movie together via Netflix Party–the extension that allows people in different locations to watch the same movie at the same time
Choose some activities to do together, such as painting nails, making crafts or painting

Virtual Gab Session

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!

More Virtual Ideas For Your Sleepover

There are a lot more ways to enjoy the night during a sleepover–even if it’s virtual:

Set up a sing-along or karaoke competition
Create a themed playlist for the night and have a big dance party
Get a mom demonstrate how to bake cookies, and then do a no-contact delivery to share them with everyone
Use an app to play an online game together

There are so many things you can do. Have fun!

Indoor Scavenger Hunts For Kids

May 6, 2020 by Jessica Moore Leave a Comment

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!

Indoor Scavenger Hunts For Kids

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.

Fun Indoor Scavenger Hunt Ideas

Puzzle Scavenger Hunts

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.

Dinosaur Hunt

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.

Educational Indoor Scavenger Hunt Ideas

Task-Oriented Scavenger Hunt

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.

Spelling Scavenger Hunt

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.

Face-Timing Scavenger Hunt Ideas

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!