10 Screen-Free Indoor Activities for Kids of All Ages

Right now we are seeing an unprecedented number of school closures due to the Corona virus. Parents are having to come up with ideas to keep kids occupied during this time. Even homeschooling families find themselves homebound as activities are cancelled as a precaution. If you are like me, you do not want to see your kids glued to screens to pass their time. To help prevent boredom and keep the kids off screens, I have 10 screen-free indoor activities for kids of all ages.

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1. Legos and challenges

Legos transcend age limits. My 20 and 18-year-old boys still love their Legos. Keep your kids thinking creatively by providing them with Lego challenges. Pinterest is full of challenge ideas or you can come up with your own. If you need more inspiration, I have a free printable with 32 Lego challenge ideas that you can find here.

2. Woodworking

When I was a kid, I loved to pick up scraps of wood my dad had laying around and make my own creations. The other day, two of my kids made a footstool and a small stuffed animal chair using scraps of wood. (They were inspired by this episode of “Dude Perfect.“). After they finished building, they painted their projects for an added activity.

If you don’t have wood scraps laying around, check on Craig’s List or Freecycle to see if you can find free wood. Ask for scraps on Facebook and you are bound to find a crafter or handyman with plenty to spare.

If you are nervous about your kids handling tools, limit what they are able to use. My kids used just hammers and nails to make their chairs. If you can provide your kids with various sizes of wood, you would be surprised at how creative they can be. You may have to work with them a little at first to show them how to properly hammer a nail (or show them a YouTube video). After that, let them loose to come up with their own creations.

3. Old pictures and scrapbooking

Take a trip down memory lane and take out some baby pictures of your kids. Looking over pictures is a great way to jog your memory and start the storytelling. Kids love to hear stories about when they were little.

If you have all your pictures “on the cloud,” have your kids select the ones they would like to print. After you have them printed, give your kids a blank book, stickers, colored paper, and let them scrapbook their pictures. The books do not have to be expensive. I know back in the day with scrapbooking was all the rage, everything had to be “archival” quality and acid free. It’s up to you, but you can pick up a composition book at the dollar store and let them use that. Sometimes it’s better to emphasize the process instead of the finished product.

4. Artistic endeavors

Get out the water color paints, finger paints, washable paints, or whatever you have on hand. You can certainly use paper, but you can also find canvases at the dollar store. If you don’t want the mess associated with painting, your kids can use crayons and/or colored pencils on the canvases. Or they can make a collage by ripping up colored tissue paper or construction paper or even wrapping paper and gluing it on either paper or a canvas.

Have your kids ever created a “crayon resist” picture? If you don’t mind the paint, they will love the “magic” quality of this project. Give them a white piece of paper and a white crayon. Have them draw a picture using the crayon (they won’t be able to see it). After they are finished, use water color paints to paint over the crayon and their pictures will “magically” appear!

Step-by-step drawing tutorials

If you have older kids, you can print out some “step by step” drawing diagrams for them to try out.

Timandevall.com has nine different printable tutorials for kids aged six and up. Your kids can learn how to draw a shark, stegosaurus, pirate, monkey and more.

Sparklebox.co.uk has 12 different printable tutorials that include: a car, dinosaur, penguin, fish, truck, polar bear, and more. If you are a homeschooling mom and have never visited Sparklebox, get to know your new friend. Admittedly, the site is a little difficult to search, but it houses many different kinds of teacher friendly resources.

Discover if you have a budding comic strip illustrator. Picklebums.com has some wonderful comic strip templates for both younger and older kids. All of the printables are free. Kate, the owner of the blog, also created two pages of speech bubbles, thought bubbles, shapes, and arrows. One page is black and white, the other is in color. They are super cute and add a lot of pizzazz to the comic strips.

5. Indoor scavenger hunts

Who doesn’t love a good treasure hunt? My kids used to hide plastic eggs for each other every day for their hunt. They would put Cheerios in the eggs, which of course tasted better having been hidden and found.

You can set up your own indoor scavenger hunt for your kiddos. If you need some inspiration, Scavengerhuntfun.com is a fabulous resource. They not only have free printable scavenger hunts available, they also take you through how to create your own hunt. I think the hunts on this site would be more suitable for older kids.

A resource for scavenger hunts for younger kids is kidsactivities.net. This site provides 40 different scavenger hunt riddles. You can’t download them as a free printable, but you might be able to copy and paste into a Word or Google document (if that’s legal…if it’s not, ignore what I said).

6. Science experiments

Encourage discovery by conducting science experiments using household items. A bit of a disclaimer here, I did say the activities I’m listing are screen free. However, in order to conduct some of these experiments, you may need to keep the web page up unless you copy down the materials and procedures.

Sciencefun.com provides short and easy experiments to try. In addition to listing out the materials and procedures, each experiment has a “How does it work?” section to explain the results.

Sciencebob.com is a treasure trove of experiment and/or demonstration ideas. Though the site has videos to accompany the experiments, you can also download the experiment specifics as a pdf. Yay!

7. Paper planes

Don’t overlook this simple idea. Planes can be made out of different types of paper. Your kids can fly them from different heights. You can have a contest to see whose plane can fly the farthest.

Everythingmom.com has a thorough post about making paper airplanes. She includes a number of links for printables and further instructions.

Foldnfly.com describes itself as a database for paper airplanes. On this site, you can choose the difficulty level of the plane you would like to make. The planes are displayed in a grid format, so it’s easy to choose one you’d like to try. The bonus here it that you can download templates and instructions to help you “fold and fly.”

8. Slime and ooblek

Lest you think I’m cheating by listing slime here instead of including it in “science experiments,” I would argue that slime is an activity of its own. I was in Walmart the other day looking for white glue. What I found was a whole section devoted to making slime. Thankfully, you can make slime with simple ingredients.

iheartnaptime.net provides a recipe for a three ingredient slime. She mixes white glue, contact saline solution, and baking soda to make her basic slime. From there, you can make different colored slime or glitter slime.

Don’t have contact solution? On cnet.com, you can find a recipe for slime that utilizes shampoo and cornstarch as the main ingredients.

What is ooblek?

I promise you, I am not speaking an alien language when I mention “ooblek.” Ooblek is a wonderful, mysterious concoction make up of simple ingredients. Cornstarch and water are the only substances you need to make this fun substance. Caution: you may end up playing with it more than your kids. I have made this with high schoolers at various times and they love it.

Thebestideasforkids.com not only provides the recipe for ooblek, but it explains why ooblek behaves as it does, and gives activites you can do with it.

9. Family competitions

One year when we were studying Greece in school, our family held its own Olympics. We broke up into four teams so there could be two kids on each team. My husband and I were the judges. Each team chose a country to represent and made that country’s flag. It was a summer Olympics year, and it was warm out, so we held some events outside.

If you can’t go outside, you can hold an all indoor Olympics. Activityvillage.co.uk lists some indoor events you can try. You have to be a member to download the printables, but the ideas are worth a look.

Need more game ideas for your Olympics? At Playpartyplan.com you can find over 200 “Minute to Win It” style games with instructions on how to score them and how to play on teams.

Chopped

Have you seen the Food Network show “Chopped?” It became a favorite in our household with our youngest “playing Chopped” with their play food and dishes. “Chopped” is a cooking competition. Chefs are given baskets which contain mystery ingredients. Those ingredients must be incorporated into the chef’s dishes. There is an appetizer, main course, and dessert round.

I was able to find two sites that show how to play Chopped at home. I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s on the list of games to try! Go to healthyhappymama.com to see how several families competed against one another. Foodfuapp.com gives some instructions on how to play as well as mystery ingredient basket ideas. You can use their app, which I assume comes at a cost, or just take their ideas and DIY the event yourself for free.

10. Kicking it in the kitchen

If you read my post “I’m not that mom,” you’re probably laughing that I would suggest kids in the kitchen. With that being said, being homebound may provide an opportune time to start teaching your kiddos cooking skills.

You can find recipes designed for kids to use at MakingLearningFun.com. Not only do they showcase kid-friendly recipes here, they also provide a number of pictorial recipes. These recipes show kids how to make simple recipes step by step. Since these recipes can be printed out, your kids can make their own cookbooks out of them. You can put them in page protectors and place them in a binder, or use a comb binding machine to make a bound book.

Another source of recipes you can use with kids is Biggerbolderbaking.com. The recipes are not designed specifically for kids, per se, but you can find a plethora of “mug” meals and cakes which would be perfect for kids to try out. I found this blog through Gemma Stafford’s YouTube channel. It is very impressive to see all the goodies you can make in a mug and a microwave.

On a humorous note, I got in trouble over a mug cake. When a good friend was pregnant, her doctor became concerned over her weight gain. She said it was my fault. Why? It was because I gave her the recipe for chocolate mug cake. Five minutes to chocolate cake became a dangerous commodity.