10 Indoor Activities for Kids

My small farmhouse basically consists of a living room, kitchen, and a weird long room that houses bookshelves, a piano, computers and a small play area for the kids (and a bathroom and bedrooms of course but we don’t play in those rooms). We also live in Alberta where it can be miserable winter weather for 6+ months of the year. And to top that off, I have 5 children, from a baby up to a 12 year old. So I try to prepare by finding indoor activities for the kids.

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1. Stock up on art supplies:

Paint, crayons, blank paper, paper plates, glue, scissors, fuzzy pom poms etc. Buy them individually or just get a mish-mash kit that’s simple and covers all the bases.

I’m not a crafty mom so I just set random supplies out and let the kids decide what they want to do with them.

I love these for when my kids want to paint. They’re great for older kids who want to be more precise and for younger kids when I don’t want to deal with cleaning up a painting mess. We bought this dragon kit a couple years ago and the boys loved it. This terrarium kit looks like a lot of fun and I’m thinking I should add them to my Christmas wish list for the boys. A friend’s kids are really into diamond painting so that is on my list of boredom busters too.

2. Have simple recipes on hand:

A couple of my favorite kid friendly recipes are 5 ingredient chocolate chip cookies, peasant bread, or homemade mozzarella. A great idea is to take a child under your wing in the evening and teach them how to make a simple dinner. They get a great life lesson and get to feel important while your begin to work yourself out of a job (in the best possible way). (I have them make one of the meals in my Easy Meal Plan and then they can make it regularly to get lots of practice.)

3. Print coloring/activity pages:

What interests your child?

I’m sure that you can search the internet and find some coloring pages to go with that interest. Popular pictures in my household of (mostly) boys are tanks, Transformers, and farm equipment. But it is as simple as typing “tank coloring page” into the search bar. Mazes are often a huge hit and some days see my boys asking to do hundreds of mazes in one sitting. Krazy Dad is a favorite site for that.

4. Play a card or board game:

Get a regular deck of cards to play Go Fish, Solitaire, War, Crazy 8s etc. Or get fancy and play Canasta or Spoons.

Get a specialized deck of cards like Uno, Phase 10, Skip-Bo, Sparkle Kitty. One that I often forget about (maybe because my kids always beat me!) is Swish by ThinkFun. We have a few products from Think Fun and… we think they are a lot of fun!

A favorite board game of our family (and many other farm families that I know) is The Farming Game. And we have played it with farmers and non farmers and it’s always a hit. My husband and I played it nightly when we first got married and I’m so excited that a couple of the kids are now old enough to play.

A favorite that even the younger kids can play is Labyrinth (though the toddler mostly just likes sliding the board) and a little more complicated but another family favorite is Scotland Yard.

5. Movies and popcorn:

Break out the Netflix or Disney+ or Amazon Prime Video. Find something family friendly to watch. Maybe a blast from the past. A regular routine at my house is to watch a BBC documentary on YouTube for 30-40 minutes at snack time a few times a week. It’s a great down time for me plus the screen time doesn’t mess with their bedtimes (we really guard our sleep in our family!).

You could even get fancy and make kettle corn popcorn the old fashioned way, in a pot on the stove.

6. Thrift Store Books:

I’m pretty frugal so I love the local thrift store that has books for a quarter. I swing by a few times a year to check their selection and pick up a bunch that I think the kids might enjoy. Then I leave them lying around the house where I know they’ll see them. Or I wrap them and give them as gifts for birthdays. Or sometimes it is fun to just gift them even when no one has a birthday.

Not all of them are winners but that’s okay because it only cost me a quarter! Sometimes I re-thrift them but most of the time they sit on our bookshelves or in our book bins for a few years and one of the kids eventually takes an interest in them. If you want more information on what kind of books I buy my book-loving boys, check out my post on Books List for Boys.

7. Science Experiments:

Maybe it is the homeschooler in me, maybe it is my own insatiable curiosity, but science experiments are a winner in my house. I often love to do them with the kids but, when I’m busy with the baby, the older boys will do experiments on their own and I get to just enjoy the results. They don’t really know that it could technically be counted as “school” because it’s just so much fun! Kitchen Science Experiments are a big hit and so are Lego physics activities. One of my favorites was a subscription to a Young Scientist Club and the would send a Magic School Bus Science Kit to our house every month.

8. Act out a play:

Write your own or act out a favorite book.

It could be as simple as each person can read a line while sitting around the table or you could make costumes and sets and record the whole thing.

Or put on a puppet show if you don’t want to act.

Sometimes I read aloud from one of their favorite book with lots of expression and voices to get the kids rolling and then they take it. I’ll be honest, the younger ones are more extroverted and dramatic so they’re easier to get into this. Often the older ones, who are more serious and introverted, roll their eyes at me and wander off but I’ll catch them bringing elements of the story into their Lego play.

9. Bookmark funny or interesting or beautiful videos on YouTube

Watch them on a cranky day. Here’s one to get you started about how kids react to an old computer. My husband has also gotten the kids into fainting goats. Yes, that’s a really thing. And they’re hilarious! They make my family laugh almost as much as when my 9 year old pretends he is a fainting goat!