With chilly mornings and darker nights just around the corner, the autumn half-term means lots more time indoors for children and parents too. Even though it’s easy to get cozy and have a movie marathon, it’s important to try and come up with a few activities that will help your kids burn off some energy. Here are some ideas to keep them busy all in the comfort of your own home.
Have A Dance Party
Dancing with your kids is a fun and light-hearted way to be active indoors with them. Not only can a spontaneous dance party take place anytime and anywhere in the house, it’s free and will help the whole family burn off some energy.
Have A Craft Day
Encourage your kids to take time this half term to enjoy being creative and express themselves through arts and crafts. Whether it’s drawing, painting, colouring in, folding origami, or making something abstract out of cardboard boxes and old milk bottles- it’s always a lot of fun and a great way to exert some excess energy on a chilly day.
Board Games
A great activity for your kids to get involved in during time spent inside in the autumn months is playing board games. There are’s so many to choose from that will help teach your child skills and keep their minds active. To help increase maths and critical thinking skills, we recommend card games or chess. Other board games such as Scrabble, Articulate, Scattegories, and Boggle really put areas such as language and spelling to the test.
Baking
Baking in the kitchen with your kids is a wonderful way for everyone involved to have fun and burn off a little energy too. Even better, the learning opportunities in the kitchen are endless and you can cover everything from counting, measuring, reading recipes, fractions, conversions, and chemistry. We recommend baking some festive gingerbread men or having a cookie decorating competition between siblings.
Tidying Up Game
You can make anything into a fun game for your kids- even something like cleaning! If there is a specific room of the house that needs to be tidied up, set your kids up a challenge to try and clean up the whole room in the duration of their favorite song. It will not only help your house get tidy but mean your kids can burn off some energy too.
Build A Fort
Building a fort is a fun and creative activity for your kids to enjoy all day long. Not only is the building of the fort pretty physical, but usually kids will spend hours playing inside it.
Get Creative With Everyday Items
Getting your children involved in building, whether that’s with LEGO, wooden blocks, or cardboard- they’re all great indoor STEM activities to keep them active indoors this autumn. Working with their hands to build something completely new is great for developing hand-eye coordination and also helps kids get a better understanding of weight, shape, angles, and size and how it affects what they’re creating. Older children and teens may enjoy building things that are a little more intricate such as models, miniatures, or perhaps a jigsaw puzzle with lots of pieces!
