Here are some ideas for home activities for kids in vacation, free of charge and easy to arrange, yet very enjoyable for a wide range of ages:
- "A challenge course": arrange various furniture and items to create a course for the kids to go through: crawl under a low table without touching it; put some sticks (a broom, a floor wiper, some pick-up sticks...) at various distances from one another, and long jump over it; slalom between plastic bottles, and so on.
- A Treasure/ Scavenger Hunt: an exciting game can take place inside the house. Each child prepares several clues, written or drawn. You prepare the last clue and the treasure (to make this even more fun, you can prepare a "Pass the Parcel" game and hide it as the treasure). Gather the clues the kids prepared and hide them accordingly. The last clue - yours - will lead to the treasure's hiding place. Some possible hiding places are: in the closet, under the bed, in the desk drawer... even a small area can yield many hiding places!
- A slumber party in a tent: build the tent - using maps or bed sheets - around a large table (spread the map over it so that it covers its sides down to the floor); between tall furniture (spread the sheets between them); using high shelves (better empty them first, of course), etc. Now, what do we do inside the tent? - A slumber party, of course: turn on a flashlight, tell jokes or haunting stories, read books, create hand shadows...
- Karaoke: If you know the lyrics of the songs you like, you can simply sing along with the video (easy to find in websites like Youtube). For a "real" karaoke search for the song's name along with the expression English subtitles/ karaoke/ lyrics; not every song is available for free, of course, but many nice songs are.
- A summer night movie in the open air: Watching a favorite movie together, along with popcorn or any other tasty snack, is always a lot of fun. It might become even better if you have a laptop and a yard, a balcony or a porch: as the sun sets, arrange yourselves comfortably outside, put the laptop on a chair so that everyone has a good view, and watch the movie in the fresh air on the computer's screen. A small screen, indeed, but the pleasant breeze will soon make you forget about that. Enjoy!
And what did you have in mind for this summer?