5 creative activities to do at home with your children

Entertaining the kids during longer periods at home isn’t easy, nor is making the time count.

Lazy days watching movies and vegging out are certainly enjoyable and much-needed after busy periods at school. But if you are eager to inject some imagination, some brain training, and some variety into your day, we’re here to help. You don’t need any fancy equipment, you likely have all you need at home already.

Not only are the following activities rife with creativity, they are infused with STEAM learning too. Approaching STEAM subjects with a fun, no pressure approach enhances their accessibility for children and can open up opportunities within these very valuable subjects. So let’s get cracking and let’s ramp up the creativity.

Find a problem and invent to solve it

We know that necessity is the mother of invention and there are always little niggles and pesky problems that crop up around the house. Tour each room and challenge your children to identify some problems (this could be the issue of Dad’s stinky socks lying around or the conundrum of having to get up from your chair to get snacks) and ask them to think up what could be invented to solve them.

Download our worksheet. We’ve included spaces to draw an invention idea, name it, and describe it. The point of this exercise is that there are no limits. Children will learn that the unique aspects of their imagination are to be celebrated and that they can go above and beyond items that are already familiar. Encourage them not to be restricted by what they think is realistic or tangible, it’s so much more fun to allow your creativity to go bonkers.

If you want to take the creativity a step further - and keep the kids occupied for longer - get prototyping. You only need basic craft items like toilet rolls, card and scissors, and glue sticks to make a model of their invention idea and witness how exciting children find it to bring something to life.

We welcome all ideas and feature them in the Ideas section of our website with personalised feedback, so please send final pictures in to us, we would love to see them!

Get cooking or get baking

The kitchen is the site of so many great things and can certainly serve as a place of creativity. Many hours can be spent cooking a delicious meal or baking up a storm. You could make it a team effort and place each child in charge of their own station as you all work towards a final dish, or, have a bake off and see everyone come up with their own unique creation.

To help things along, consider choosing a theme. Select a certain type of cuisine or baked item as a springboard and a means to lessen your shopping list. And to really ham up the creativity, make it art. With baking in particular, each child can add their own artistic flare to their food. Provide pots of icing pens, chocolate drops, even edible glitter if you can deal with the clean up. Maybe you could even create biscuit family portraits of each other!

A kitchen-based activity offers the ideal chance to teach children about food waste. We don’t want to make a total mess of the kitchen and fill up the bin unnecessarily, we want to use new but also existing resources and act conscientiously while we are creating and having fun.

We did The Food Waste Challenge with WRAP and Love Food Hate Waste and invited children to solve the problem of food waste. Utilise that challenge’s resource pack, it’s a good source of info to help kids understand the subject and incorporate mindful thinking into their culinary adventures.

Put on a performance

There are so many styles of performance and one is sure to suit each child in need of something to do. Whether you have an aspiring singer, an avid poet, or comedian in the making, putting together a show is a vibrant way to express creativity.

Have the performers pick their medium and prepare something for your family to watch. Use your local library to get ideas from books. Perhaps pick a character and create a monologue or make puppets and act out a scene from a beloved story.

Of course, every earth-shattering performance needs a stage. Part of the experience is making one. It might be blankets and pillows thrown on the floor, lamps pointed at the living room wall, or even a bonafide set made from cardboard, it’s another avenue of creativity. And don't skimp on the costumes. If your kids have always wanted to raid your wardrobe, this might be the perfect opportunity.

This activity allows a range of talents to shine through. You could pick a winner and get everyone excited about a prize to be won but, for a performance such as this, just taking part and getting smiles and laughs from the audience is usually reward enough.

Get crafting using foraged materials

Weather permitting, use your time at home to go outdoors and explore what mother nature has to offer. Better yet, pack a picnic and take care of lunch too! Sourcing foraged materials to use during arts and crafts time is an excellent way to reuse and recycle existing resources. You could pick out a familiar or entirely new area to explore and spend a good while identifying items to take home. Leaves, twigs, shells, feathers, stones, flowers, nature’s wealth of colours and textures are all yours for the taking.

You could also integrate some learning about nature. You might not be able to deliver an entire biology lesson but whilst you have certain materials in hand it's a good time to open up a discussion about them. Find out what your kids already know about plants, wildlife, and the seasons, and see if there are any fresh facts you can teach them. Outdoor learning is very valuable for children.

This activity allows young people to flex and develop their arts and crafts skills. From using scissors to engineering each part of their make, arts and crafts time can boost a child’s self esteem as well as provide hours of easy-going entertainment.

Find challenges and downloadable resources online

Turn to the trusty internet and see what’s available in terms of delivering activities to your child and how much can really be achieved with just a printer!

We have a long list of challenges that we have devised and delivered across the world along with over 500 Mini Challenges. If you’re planning on carrying out our first suggested activity, check out the What’s Your Problem Challenge, it's the ideal starting point for solving everyday problems.

For more in depth exploration of a challenge topic, many of our challenges come with free, downloadable resource packs. Pick and choose the materials that are right for you and customise the delivery based on the time you have available and the age and attention spans of the children in receipt of the activity. Take our NSERC Space Challenge resource pack for example, it contains powerpoints with all of the challenge information and activity sheets like an astronaut’s diary and a mindmap. All you need to do is let the minds of your little inventors blast off.

Get creating, get bonding, and enjoy.