Need some ideas for indoor activities for kids? Discover easy, fun, and engaging ways to help your toddler or preschooler learn and grow at home!
One of the many challenges as a parent or caregiver is finding ways to keep your little one engaged, entertained, and active on days when you are forced to stay inside. As winter sets in and it gets colder, spending time outside becomes less available.
A rainy or snowy day, or any number of pandemic-related reasons, can quickly have you and your little one facing a day stuck inside. Having an arsenal of indoor activities for kids can help you be prepared and make the most of your time inside.
Activities for toddlers at home do not have to be elaborate and complicated undertakings. There are many simple, fun ways to help support your child’s growth and development and provide you with some special bonding opportunities to pass the time and have fun!
Indoor Activities Ideas For Kids
We’ve compiled a list of some simple, fun, and enriching indoor activities for kids that you can do with your toddler or preschooler at any time!
For more indoor activity ideas and to gain access to more than 1,800 activities created by Early Childhood Development Experts, download the Kinedu app today!
Indoor Activities For Toddlers
Your one to three year old toddler is full of energy and growing fast! Finding indoor activities for toddlers during the winter months or when you otherwise can’t go outside to explore can provide you with ways to continue to support your little one’s growth and to foster a fun and creative learning environment right in your own home.
Engaging in these types of activities can improve your toddler’s physical, cognitive, and linguistic skills and teach them important lessons about healthy eating. Here are some of the best indoor activities for toddlers for your child ages 13-36 months.
Building and Knocking Down
- Recommended Age: 13 months and up
- Development: Physical
- Goal: To encourage your child to play with building blocks and foster their hand coordination abilities
- Skills Practiced: Developing hand coordination
- Supplies Needed:
- Building Blocks
- 1 Stuffed Animal
How To:
For this indoor activity for toddlers, find a safe space to play with your child. Take out some building blocks and a stuffed animal. Ask your toddler to help you build some towers by passing you the building blocks one by one. When you finish building some towers, take out the stuffed animal and tell your child it is going to knock down the towers.
Make funny voices and encourage your little one to imitate you by knocking down the towers with the stuffed animal. Have fun building and knocking down all kinds of structures. This activity will not only stimulate your child’s hand coordination, but it will also encourage them to imitate you and ignite their imagination!
Simon Says
- Recommended Age: 15 months and up
- Development: Physical
- Goal: To improve coordination by moving the different parts of the body.
- Skills Practiced: First steps
How To:
This is a great activity for toddlers at home, or anywhere you find yourself inside and in need of something to do with your child, because you don’t need any supplies!
Begin this activity by explaining to your child how to play “Simon Says”. You will be “Simon” and they will have to do or bring whatever “Simon” asks. Ask them to do different things, for example to point out a certain body part and then make a movement with it. You can ask them to find their favorite toy that is nearby. This activity was designed to keep reinforcing your toddler’s coordination and memory.
The Lost Toys
- Recommended Age: 18 months and up
- Development: Cognitive
- Goal: To reinforce problem-solving strategies.
- Skills Practiced: Early knowledge and curiosity
- Supplies Needed:
- A small collection of toys
How To:
Begin this activity by inviting your child to play a detective game, where you must look for lost toys. Beforehand, hide their favorite toys in places in which they will be easily found. Help them find the toys by giving hints and praising them when they succeed in finding them. Throughout this activity your child is actively working on their problem-solving strategies.
Nutritious Food Collage
- Recommended Age: 21 months and up
- Development: Health
- Goal: To learn about nutritious and healthy foods.
- Supplies Needed:
- Images of Healthy Foods
How To:
Before starting this indoor activity, collect images of healthy foods. You can find them in supermarket magazines, newspapers, or simply print them out. Once you have your collection ready, ask your child to study the different images. Let them observe the pictures as well and then ask them to point out different foods based on their color, shape, etc.
When your toddler identifies the right items, praise them, mention the name of the food, and cut it out. Then help your toddler glue each food item onto a sheet of paper. Repeat these steps to create a beautiful collage of healthy foods. After the activity, your little one will have learned about and have become familiarized with a variety of healthy foods, without the pressure of having to try them.
For more great ideas for indoor activities for kids, and to join interactive play sessions that feature music, arts, guided play, and more, download the Kinedu app today!
Indoor Activities For Preschoolers
By the time your child is 3 years old, they have become preschool age and their eagerness and ability to learn all sorts of things about the world around them and how they interact with it explodes. Indoor activities for kids are a great way to keep the learning fun and interesting right at home!
Here are some fun and engaging indoor activities for preschoolers:
Shape Walking II
- Recommended Age: 38 months and up
- Development: Cognitive
- Goal: To learn about shapes and associate them with different objects.
- Skills Practiced: Learning about shapes and colors
- Supplies Needed:
- Round, Square and Triangular Objects
- Masking Tape
How To:
Begin this indoor activity for preschoolers by tracing out a circle, a triangle and a square on the floor with the tape. Now, together with your child, walk along the marked shapes repeating and emphasizing their form. Then, give your little one the objects and encourage them to explore their shape. Help your child place the objects inside their corresponding marked shapes. Explain to them the different forms and encourage your child to identify them. During this activity, your toddler will learn to associate objects with their geometric shape.
Word Tag II
- Recommended Age: 44 months and up
- Development: Linguistic
- Goal: To enhance your child’s phonetic and conversational skills with an activating game.
- Skills Practiced: Conversational Skills
How To:
To begin this indoor activity, gather a few of your child’s friends for a fun hour of play. Explain to them that you are playing Freeze and Tag, and that when someone is tagged, they will freeze on the spot and wait for someone to tap them lightly in order to be unfrozen. In this game, you will call out a category of objects, like fruits or animals, so that the unfreezer will say a word that corresponds to that category, like “apple.” The frozen person will need to say another object from that same category, like “banana” in order to get back in the game. Don’t worry if some of the words the kids say are not part of the category, the important thing is to get them thinking and have fun! This activity is a fun and stimulating way of getting your child to exercise their conversational skills spontaneously.
The Geography of My City
- Recommended Age: 54 Months and up
- Development: Cognitive
- Goal: Learning about nature and geography.
- Skills Practiced: Knowledge of the natural world
- Supplies Needed:
- Leaves
- Colored pencils
- Pictures of a city
- Playdough
How To:
Start this activity by finding a comfortable space to sit with your child and bring out photographs of your city. Show them the photographs and talk about what you see. Identify the different buildings, streets, and if there are mountains, fields, lakes, etc. Talk about the different elements you see and how they make up the city. You can also mention geographic features that aren’t in your city or in the pictures, so your child can review these terms.
Then, bring out some paper, crayons and playdough and tell your little one you will make a work of art about your city. You can recreate a building, a street, park or anything your child finds interesting about the city. Use the playdough to decorate and add texture to your drawings. Let your child use the playdough however they want, let them get creative!
Motivate your child to talk about the pictures and their drawing using geographical terms; you can set the example and then ask them to repeat these words. Remember to congratulate your child for their effort and creativity. This activity will help your child learn about their surroundings, while stimulating cognitive abilities like attention, memory and creativity.
Enjoy Your Time At Home With Indoor Activities For Kids
Engaging indoor activities for kids can help pass the time and avoid the rut of being stuck at home. Kids learn through play and your child will love spending the extra time with you learning, growing, and playing.
At Kinedu, we support you and your child by providing you access to more than 1,800 activities created by experts in early childhood development.
Download the Kinedu App today for more activity ideas and expert advice!
