EDUCATIONAL FUN INDOOR GAMES FOR KIDS DON’T HAVE TO BE COSTLY
Fun indoor games whether you are a child or an adult depend on a willingness to play and the purpose behind it.
Indoor recess games such as a school scavenger hunt for items around the classroom are also fun for school-age kids.
Indoor group games for kids are not only fun but they bring children and siblings together so they work as a team.
Team building games for kids indoors such as a group scavenger hunt allows each child to have input.
Where one child may want to go left another might understand the scavenger hunt hints better and motivate his/her group to go right.
What happens is the child who knows will explain the reasoning as to why they must go right and not left.
This type of back and forth education between children help them to understand on a level that may be easier for them.
I often find that our son works better in a team setting when other children offer him advice which gets him thinking.
For example, our son was playing with a wood puzzle with two of his friends earlier this year at our house for a play date.
The puzzle was fairly easy and just right for the senior kindergarten to grade 1 level.
When our son went to put a puzzle piece into a spot he was struggling to get the piece into place.
His friend touched his hand and said no it won’t fit there because it has a flat side where it needs to have bumps.
As funny as that was it became a form of education for our son who had realized his friend was right.
He found where the puzzle piece needed to go by a simple suggestion by a friend. Puzzle solved.
List of Fun Indoor Games
Since we are having to stay indoors with the outbreak of the coronavirus we’ve come up with some fun games to play with our son.
What I like about these indoor games is that he is very involved as are the adults (my wife and I).
All of these games can be useful if you have a home daycare or for teachers who are looking for games to play on a rainy day.
1. Math Games Using Painted Rocks and Shells
On a family walk along the beach, we picked up all of these shells that had different coloured designs on them.
Once our son had his fun play with them we painted them white together with kids paint.
When the shells were fully dried I used a black Sharpie marker to number them 1 to 10.
I can’t tell you how these little numbered shells have been valuable for teaching our son who is a visual learner to understand basic addition and subtraction.
Every day for 15 minutes we have family fun math time using the shells.
We put a piece of paper on the wall with all of our names and take turns creating simple math equations.
If you have 4 shells and take away 2 how many shells will you have left?
Obviously, we play along with him so he learns but he just adores using the shells.
I’m hoping to collect some rocks next to do the same but with letters, we can use to spell words.
2. Indoor Scavenger Hunt
When you are looking for fun games to play indoors with your children they should always include siblings or adults.
A child who is homeschooled or in this case of the coronavirus pandemic it’s important to keep your child engaged.
For our son, an indoor scavenger hunt was the perfect game since he plays it at school each week.
We are lucky since he has such an amazing teacher who designed her classroom with educational activity centres.
Each week she gives each child a handout with photos of items the child has to find around the classroom.
Once they find the item they need to check it off and then write down the name of the item using their pencil.
This not only improves their writing skills but allows them to correlate words to objects a process leading them into grade 1.
New Free Printable: Shapes In Our Neighbourhood Scavenger Hunt
3. Kitchen Soccer
Fun games to play indoors can also be sports-related and we chose soccer since our son is an avid player.
We don’t have a large kitchen but we set up a laundry basket against the stove to be the soccer net and to make it legit.
Then we brought out bottles of condiments to use as traffic cones such as ketchup, mustard and a jar of pickles.
We also have traffic cones that we bought at the Dollar Store a few years back which you can also use.
I used tape on the kitchen floor to outline the outer limits where no one could kick the ball, the same as in proper soccer.
We all took turns using our feet to maneuver the ball around the condiments and trying to kick the soccer ball into the laundry basket.
At the end of 10 tries, each whoever had the most goals won a prize.
In this case, it was a pack of chocolate chip cookies.
You can create similar indoor kids’ games using the sports they like to play.
Anything to keep the family active.
4. Hide and Seek
I was trying to think of traditional games to play with kids indoors that I liked as a child.
It was then when our son asked if we could all play hide and seek.
Perfect, I thought although hiding as an adult can be tricky since you’re far bigger than you were as a child.
Our son just loves playing hide and seek with the two of us even though we always know where he hides.
He’s terrible at keeping quiet but fun no less.
One of the players counts to 10 while covering his/her eyes as the other players find a hiding spot.
Once the player counting is done he/she must try to find the players who are hiding with-in a time-limit.
Whoever finds the most players after the same amount of turns as a seeker wins
5. Toss The Socks In The Bucket
This was a super fun game to play and easy to put together.
We have a large Time Timer that we bought on Amazon for our son to help him navigate time.
The timer is also great for playing our fun indoor games as we set it and forget it.
With this game, we had three buckets and a pile of sockets in front of us.
We set the time for 2 minutes and whoever had the most socks in their bucket at the end won a point.
When the timer went off we each had to count the pairs of socks and write the number on a piece of paper.
This is a fun game to play as a family and a great way to learn numbers.
You can use other materials such as balls if you don’t have many pairs of socks on hand.
6. Emotions Bingo
Kids love to play fun indoor games such as BINGO where they can win a prize, especially in a class setting.
At home, our son likes to play BINGO for prizes to and we all play using traditional BINGO dabbers.
If you don’t have a BINGO dabber you can circle the spot with coloured pencils or crayons.
This particular BINGO game we picked up from a local clinic that was in a facility we were visiting.
I thought it was a great idea to teach our son the different emotions he may experience and to help him understand.
We photocopied the sheet then cut out all of the emotions after I had laminated them.
I keep them in a round Tupperware type container so we don’t lose any.
We pull out one at a time and mark them on our sheets then talk about the emotion as a family.
Each of us tries to come up with a silly face to match the emotion.
You can easily create a BINGO game for your family using a word document such as this.
Simple and fun without extra costs to your budget. Plus, it’s educational at the same time.
7. Spelling Games
We have been reading to our son every night since he was a baby and now he reads to us.
Having a child who can read from a young age is great but comprehension is also important.
This is the area that our son needs to improve in so we have been working with him to read and we all take turns explaining what was read.
We also like to use Melissa and Doug See and Spell for spelling and comprehension which are valuable to own.
If you don’t want to spend the money to purchase educational games you can make flashcards with construction paper.
I did this for our son to start with and are still using them for his homeschooling now.
We’ve repurposed the flashcards so he takes the word on the card and makes a sentence with it.
We all take turns and explain the sentence then give each other a mark.
In the end, we all get a prize for doing so well and practice the words we struggled with.
Another fun game we have it the Vowel OWL game that teaches our son about vowels.
These types of games are great for home and can easily be found online at Amazon or garage sales and second-hand shops.
Lastly, we play rhyming words games again to teach our son how words can sound the same but are different.
The Learning Journey Spelling and Match game is an excellent learning resource that we used to own but have since sold.
Again, you can make photo flashcards at home using construction paper or bristol board from the Dollar Store.
Simple, affordable fun indoor games for kids that can be part of homeschooling.
Fun Indoor Games and Family Time
The past few weeks being home due to COVID-19 has taught my wife and me just how much fun being a kid is again.
It’s not that we don’t play with our son but it’s that we take the educational system for granted because we rely on our teachers.
Now that most people are home and the schools are closed parents are left to teach their children while they are away from the classroom.
Although many schools are offering online educational tutorials and other materials for kids to learn to incorporate fun educational indoor games is a great way to bring the family together.
Be Safe and have fun.
Two popular posts you may be interested in reading on Canadian Budget Binder from my fellow blogger Lisa Marie at The Canadian Homeschooler. She has many resources for parents in Canada.
You can also download my FREE Scavenger Hunt Printable for kids from my Free Downloads Page.
Homeschooling in Canada and Bullying Part 1 The Pros and Cons of Homeschooling in Canada Part 2
Discussion: What other inexpensive fun indoor family games have you played with your kids? I’d love to hear your experiences below.
The post 6 Educational and Fun Indoor Games For Kids (Free Scavenger Hunt Printable) appeared first on Canadian Budget Binder.
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