Tag: activities

Boredom Buster Ideas for Kids Stuck at Home That Aren’t YouTube
“I’m bored!”, if I had a dollar for every-time my children said that during this pandemic. It can be hard to find fun activities but these boredom buster ideas for kids are a good start. We have scored the internet to find the best at-home activities that don’t require a screen!

This post contains affiliate links– thank you for supporting us.

Make a Fort

Forts make everything more fun! You could put a few chairs next to each other with a blanket over them. My kids love to bring a flashlight or headlamp and book into a homemade fort.

Or you can use Crazy Forts. Crazy Forts are a unique, award winning, building and creative toy. Crazy Forts come with 69 child- safe toggles and rods that join together to build any play space from your child’s imagination. Find it here on Amazon.

Or you can order an indoor tent and let your kids decorate their own little space for reading, playing and making art! Find this clubhouse tent here on Amazon.

Build Something

Don’t recycle those old Amazon boxes just yet! Build something with them like a dollhouse, home for their stuffed animals or even a jet pack. We put together a jet-pack DIY here a few years ago for a Halloween costume, see it here.

Build with Kinetic Sand or Slimygloop Sand – You can make a splash with moldable, stretchable, and expandable creations. Pack and layer different colored slimygloopslimysand into your molds, flip them onto your play area, gently lift, and dive into your own sea world — without the mess! Find Slimpygloop Sand at Amazon here or Kinetic Sand at Target here.

Build with a Marble Run Kit – My two kids received a marble run kit for Christmas a few years ago and they loved building with it! Find it on Amazon here.

Learn Something New

Explore a museum online,

Stop Motion Animation Kit or App – Stop Motion Animation allows your child to bring movies to life! We own this Klutz Lego Make Your Own Movie Activity Kit and love it! Find it here on Amazon. We also downloaded a stop motion animation app to our iPad. The app we use is

Learn to code with a coding robot! Botley helps your child learn early STEM skills while playing and having fun. He teaches kids to code with active, screen-free play that’s perfect for promoting critical thinking and problem solving skills. Find it on Amazon here.

Logic Puzzles and Books – Excercise your mental muscle with awesome challenges, wacky logic puzzles, optical illusions, and brain-busting riddles.

Brain Games Book: Find it here on Amazon
Logic Puzzles Book: Find at Target Here

Trying to find something art or board game related that kids can play by themselves

More Boredom Buster Ideas on Today I Need A…
February 19, 2021
Educational At Home Activities for Kids
Make homeschooling fun with cardboard sculptures, a treasure hunt, toy parachutes and stop motion animation. These days we are all looking for more educational at home activities for kids. Scroll down to see our top 4 ideas!

Cardboard sculptures
Looking for STEAM enrichment activities? Here is a fun and easy Art and Engineering activity we did this week. Plus, it only uses things you have at home: cardboard and scissors!

To make these sculptures, first cut shapes from cardboard, then cut thin notches in the sides (make sure they are not too wide or they won’t hold). Connect the pieces together where you cut the notches to make sculptures!

We painted some of ours for more color. I also challenged the kids to see who could make the tallest sculpture. If any of you make sculptures, we would love to see them!

Treasure Hunt
As part of our Spring Break during the Coronavirus shelter-in-place order, I wanted to give my kids something different and more memorable than our regular stay-at-home activities. I thought why not make them a treasure hunt around our house and yard? I decided to use a little of the money we would have spent on spring break activities and ordered a “prize” for my kids. Then, I created some clues that lead them around the outside of our house. The last clue they found led them to a “treasure map” with an “X” on the spot where we hid their prize.

The kids really had to think critically and work on sequencing due to the nature of how I wrote the clues and their order. They also actively worked on problem solving and because they worked on it together, they had to cooperate and use teamwork!

My kids LOVED this activity. I mean, really loved it. They were running all over looking for clues, jumping from excitement when they found another one. When they finally found the prize they immediately asked if we could do another treasure hunt right away and without prizes. I made my clues and treasure map in Adobe Illustrator, but I found this free online resource for making your own map – https://treasuremaps.kadsoftwareusa.com/. They loved it so much they are making a treasure hunt for us!

Toy Parachutes

Check out the LOL Doll Parachute my 6-year-old made! Such a fun educational at home activity for kids made with items from in your house! After my daughter made her parachute, she took turns with her sister dropping it off the balcony at the top of our stairs and testing it against other toys that didn’t have parachutes to see which was the fastest/slowest.

If you’re looking for something STEAM or science related to do during this time away from school, check out the DIY Section at Kiwico through our affiliate link here: kiwi-crate.7eer.net/PD2kq! They have a list of ideas for science-related projects that can be done at home. We used their Parachute Toy Project for directions – kiwi-crate.7eer.net/kq7bv

Stop Motion Animation

Stop-motion animation is something I used to teach to my Middle School students back when I was a teacher, but now there are so many apps that make it easy for anyone to do! This makes a great educational at home activity for kids when the weather is not great, which has been most of the time we’ve been home unfortunately. I downloaded an app called Stop Motion Studio on our iPad and barely had to show my girls anything before they took it over and started making their own animations! They are obsessed and I ended up paying for the full version, which is $5, so they could add sounds, title cards and more.

If you like our Educational At Home Activities for Kids article, try:
March 26, 2020