Our top 8 fun indoor activities guaranteed to avoid the boredom during school holidays! From creative crafts to indoor challenges to keep your kids entertained and inspired.
1. Set up Craft Station
At Strength Heroes we are all about giving children activities and materials to spark their imagination. In our school holiday workshops, it’s not about cookie cutter art. It is about giving children a prompt or walking them through an activity where they get to decide how it turns out with the materials at hand.
Children have an innate curiosity and we have found they don’t need much prompting to be creative. Think of your craft station as an invitation to play. I used to have a craft box and then on holidays or during term I would take out a few items and see what the kids created.
Set up different craft stations with materials for making handmade cards, paper crafts, or even simple sculptures. Encourage children to express themselves through various art forms.
Here is a suggested basic kit.
1. Air dry clay
2. Google eyes
3. Paper (coloured and plain)
4. Cardboard (heavier board paper and cut out shapes)
5. Textas
6. Sharpies, crayons, pencils
7. Nose, eye, and mouth stickers
8. Face collage sheets
9. Stick glue and PVA (messy)
10. Blu Tac
11. Scissors (plain and patterns)
12. Pipecleaners
13. Beads
14. Ruler
15. Pebbles or small rocks
16. Scratch art
17. Acrylic paint
18. Watercolour paint
19. Oil pastels
20. Soft pastels
21. Playdough
22. Canvas
23. Glitter (plain or glue)
This comprehensive list offers a range of creative supplies, from mess-free options for cleaner activities to messier materials for more hands-on and experimental art projects. In Perth, you can find these items at various stores like Kmart, Officeworks, and Educational Art Supplies in Nedlands, either in-store or online.
One idea for kids to make is Handmade cards. These are an excellent way to show gratitude.
Kids can write a card to:
- tell someone why you are lucky to have them in your life,
- thank someone for something they have done for you,
- to thank someone for something they have given you.
Tip: Encourage your children to make a card for someone who may not expect it. Maybe your neighbour, your favourite café owner or the person who sees them safely across the street on the way to school.
What you will need
- Card stock, cut and folded to A5 dimensions.
- Scissors
- Paper
- Stickers
- Pens, pencils and markers
- Washi tape
- Stick glue
- Old cards and magazines for cutting out words or pictures.
Reduce, Recycle and Reuse Tip
If you don’t have card paper, why not cut up fashion and make up shopping bags. These bags are usually made of card or heavy weight paper. Your child can add paper to the inside to write their message on.
2. Collaborative Art Mural
Give kids an opportunity to paint a mural together. Buying one canvas large canvas can be quite costly. A more cost-effective tip is to buy smaller canvas, one per child and tape them together on a surface for kids to work on together.
Did you know? Artists often create paintings in panels. One famous Australian painting is The Pioneer painted by Fredrick McCubbin, which is actually three canvases. Fun Fact: 2 pieces is called a diptych, 3 pieces is a triptych and 4 or more a polyptych
What you will need.
- Acrylic paints – we only use primary colours and white in our art classes. This gives children a chance to experiment with mixing colours. We never give black.
- Paint brushes or other things to apply paint (see tips)
- Something to mix paint on, e.g. plastic plate, vegetable tray etc.
- Things to stencil: Masking tape, stickers, contact, flowers and leaves.
- Things to stamp: onion bags, corks, foam stickers stuck to cardboard to make stamps, flowers, corrugated cardboard.
- Things to mark over dry paint – Marker pens – posca, sharpies,
- A table or surface
Suggested method.
Option 1. Kids can do whatever they want. Let them play, take control. You may be surprised what happens. You may want to explain how to stencil or stamp.
Option 2: Use this process as a guide.
Get kids to use masking tape to put a few lines of masking tape on the canvas’s. Make sure the tape goes from side to side of the canvas.
Use paint brushes and other things to spread paint to cover surface of canvas. Children can choose which colours and where they put the colours.
Leave to dry
Have morning tea/lunch. Go for a play
When surface is touch dry, pull off masking tape.
Do a 2nd layer
You could try:
- Putting new masking tape in a different place.
- Put spots of paint (e.g. size of a ten cent coin) directly on the canvas and use credit card of side of a piece of cardboard to drag the paint across the canvas.
- Try some stencilling – e.g. put a leaf on the canvas. Paint on the leaf and over the edges. Lift off to reveal the outline of the leaf.
- Try some stamping – e.g. dip a stamping item in the paint and then press to print it on the canvas.
- Paint the white left by taking off the masking tape stencil with a light colour.
Leave to dry.
4. Sustainability craft challenge
We use a lot of recycling in our school holiday workshops and school incursions. We challenge children to make a sculpture using only recycled materials. We usually give them a theme, such as “Make a character that will remind you to calm down.”
A simple version that is easy to set up in your home is something I first encountered at Hollywood Primary School. The school had a table set up in their undercover area. On a few tables were caddies with textas, tape, hole punches, lackey bands paperclips and staplers. They also had a box with collected recycled items. I watched as kids as young as PP and old as Year 2 made stuff during recess and lunch.
You can do this saving anything that may be useful and keep it in a box. Let kids know what the box is for and pretty soon they will be adding to it, e.g. Toilet rolls tubes, little boxes, bottle tops, bread tags, old pens, textas, packaging, small plastic bottles.
Tip – find old stickers or contact that you have in your stationary cupboard and challenge them to use that to stick with. Contact can be cut up the size of bandaids and makes great substitute for sticky tape.
Tip – your gift wrapping box may have some old wrapping that can be put in your box.
- Indoor Challenges
Kids love a challenge – ask them to make the longest gratitude paper chain. Link to it.
For even more challenges we have found the Guinness World Record challenges that kids can try at home using household objects. Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgX04s7SLPw
5. Storytelling and Puppetry
Create a cosy storytelling corner with pillows and blankets. Encourage kids to invent and act out their own stories using handmade puppets. This enhances creativity and storytelling skills.
To make puppets
Puppets can be easy to make and often using recycled items found in your home namely, old socks that loose their partner. You can transform a paper bag, shoe box, cardboard tube, coffee cup, yoghurt containers into a puppet by just adding a stick you find in the park. If you are a regular op shopper, look out for old wooden spoons as they make excellent puppets.
Eyes and features can be easily drawn or taped on. A hot glue gun makes it easy to add eyes (cut up cardboard, draw some eyes) or hair (wool, fabric or onion bag).
We find kids love sewing so it’s a great opportunity to teach older kids a life skill to sew a button.
6. Cooking Adventures
Plan easy and safe cooking activities that kids can participate in. Simple recipes for cookies, sandwiches, or fruit skewers not only engage them but also teach basic cooking skills.
Here is a list of 69 recipes that kids can make themselves. https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/easy-recipes-for-kids-to-make-by-themselves/
Make a day (or two of it) by getting the kids to choose, plan, shop and then a day to make their recipes.
7. Music and Dance Party.
Arrange a mini disco with their favorite music. This activity not only promotes physical activity but also allows children to express themselves through movement and rhythm.
Get kids involved
Make handmade invites: Get kids to invite their family or friends to come to their Music and Disco party.
Choose the music: Get them to choose and compile a Disco Dance Playlist on your music streaming service.
Encourage them to dress up: Give them free reign over some cheap make up and find the wigs in the dress up box.
Make some easy snacks: Make some food like fruit kebabs.
8. Indoor Arty Workshops
Each holiday we run a range of different fun and engaging kids art classes. Check out our upcoming workshops.