Time for some simple and fun indoor activities for kids and toddlers at home! We’ve rounded up here some super engaging and fun activities for boys and girls! Perfect for your daily toddler routine and to keep your 2-year-old and 3-year-old busy all day long! Spring or summer, fall or winter, rain or shine, these activities are great not only for rainy days.
We warmed up with some gross motor and simple math activities first, to make learning more fun. Then, we practiced our fine motor skills with some crafts and sensory activities and suggested some practical life and simple science activities too.
This is an open list and we are going to add regularly more activities for kids.
Fun and engaging, these activities at home are great for ages 2-5 and can be repeated daily. And most importantly, you can set them up in less than a minute.
Gross Motor – Indoor Activities for Kids
1. 10-Minute Standing Barre Core Workout
This is just great indoor activity for kids as well adults. Staying at home, reduces significantly our physical activity and can have impact on our immune system. So, what’s the solution?
Science suggests in fact, that physical activity may help flush bacteria out of the lungs and airways. This may reduce our chances of getting a cold, flu, or other illness. Exercising as little as 10 minutes a day, can help you stay healthy and happy.
This 10-Minute standing barre core workout by Popsugar Fitness is simply great.
It’s challenging enough to make you sweat and easy enough to be followed also by a 2-year-old. So, check it out for yourself – this is a short video of our little one, following the instructions.
2. Couch Diving – Gross Motor Indoor Activities for Kids
Kids love to be active! And what’s more active than jumping? Couch Diving! I’m in fact pretty happy that our IKEA Vallentuna couch can be taken apart as we want! That’s how couch diving becomes pretty safe activity even for a 2-year-old. Up and down and all around!
3. Jumping Islands – Gross Motor Indoor Activities for Kids
Wondering how can you use your kid’s IKEA step stools? Well, you can build a jumping islands. That’s super fun activity for kids, that keeps them busy and active for a while.
Most importantly, make sure that you place the step stools on nonslip surface! Ever since our little one started to walk, we put carpets at home everywhere. That’s how we made sure, that he does not get that hurt if he falls down.
And that’s how jumping islands work in our case:
4. 4-Minute Workout for kids
These 16 yoga and ballet inspired exercises for kids, will make your little one not burn off great amount of energy, but also have lot’s of fun with the activity flash cards.
5. Match the Number
Try out today Match the Number – a simple and fun educational indoor activity. It’s great to practice not only gross motor and fine motor skills but also early math skills.
6. Balls on a Drying Rack
Balls on a drying rack is one of our favourite indoor toddler activities. It has so many variations and you can practice not only gross motor and fine motor skills, but also math and language. All you need is just few balls and a drying rack!
7. Fishing in Pool
Our little one loves fishing. And when fishing outdoors is not an option, he does it at home. Either quietly in a fishing station or more actively, in our self-build ball pit.
8. Islands and Caves
Take all the step stools you have and build a jumping islands. Then add some big boxes in the path. That will be your caves. Your little one has to jump from island to island and sit still in the caves. That’s super fun activity for kids, that keeps them busy and active for a while.
9. Jumping up and down in Muddy Puddles
Well, when jumping up and down in muddy puddles outside is not an option, then let’s do it inside. We use part of our couch, but it works great with a mattress as well. If your little one likes Peppa Pig as much as our does, you can play Peppa Pig “My First Album” 2019 on Spotify.
Sensory and Fine Motor Activities – Indoor Activities for Kids
10. Mystery Bag
11. Ladybugs in a tree
12. Honey Bee Sensory Bag
13. Easter Nesting Dolls Play
Nesting materials like these help your little one understand spatial relationships, develop fine motor skills, and learn comparison (big, bigger, small, smaller), as well as prepositions (inside, outside, under). It’s super easy to create them and so much fun to play with them!
14. METAL RINGS AND TOOLS
If you happen to have some IKEA assembly tools, packaging foam and metal curtain rings, set up this fun and engaging fine motor activity for your toddlers and kids. They can set up not only different shapes and objects, from funny looking faces to a ticking clock, but also make different sounds with the metal pieces.
15. The Wheels on The Bus Sensory Bag
One minute is all the time you will need to create this super easy AND super fun “The Wheels on the Bus” sensory bag. This sensory bag is great for ages 1-3 and helps your little one to practice their fine motor skills.
16. Feed the pig
A box from a toy packaging can be a great toy as well! You can turn it easily in a hungry pig and feed it with anything they would like to eat. We used our toy food.
Practical Life – Indoor Activities for Kids
17. Simple Pouring Station
Simple pouring station is a great activity for young toddlers to learn pouring skills.
With a 3-year-old, you can start practicing not only pouring but also measurement and estimation. Great as a homeschool preschool activity!
18. Cutlery sorting
19. Feed Beany – Indoor Activities for Kids
Beany – the bean eating monster loves beans – cook for him. You can serve them plain or in a sensory bag.
Great Posture – Indoor Activities for Kids
20. Book Balancing on the head
We all live in a digital age with our heads down to the phone or Ipad. Well, we all look better and are happier when we have a good posture. So let’s go back to the books and balance them on our heads. So much fun when we all do it together!
21. Dancing Class
Make a playlist with your little ones favourite nursery rhymes and song and ask them to teach you dancing. Not only you are going to get to know your kid better, but you can dance together and that’s super fun.
Simple Science Experiments for kids at home
22. WATER CANDLE EXPERIMENT
The water-candle experiment is a great early science activity to try out with kids. We tried it with our almost 3-year-old many many times and he insists almost daily to repeat it.
23. Tape house
This tape house is so awesome. Super easy to create it in 2 minutes with a double sided tape and use it for hours! Start with some gross motor activities, do some counting afterwards and finally practice fine motor skills!
Happy Playing!