The Ultimate List of 70+ Indoor Activities for Kids

Just because you’re stuck inside doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a day at the beach! Fill a bin with sand and add shovels, scoops, and other sand toys. Throw in small toy beach creatures like fish, crabs, and starfish too. For a more authentic experience, divide the bin in two and put water on one side and sand on the other.

Gather a selection of items in different colors like pom poms or small toys. Use dot stickers to label the wells of a muffin tin with different colors, and give kids a pair of plastic tweezers sized for small fingers. Kids use the tweezers to sort the items into the appropriate wells, practicing sorting and colors too!

Here’s a simple game that kids never tire of: How tall of a tower can you build? Use traditional items like wooden blocks, LEGO bricks, and other building toys. Or, think outside the box and try items like paper cups or cardboard boxes instead. (Don’t be surprised when the best part is knocking the tower down at the end!)

A bag of pipe cleaners can provide hours of fun! Practice twisting them into 2D shapes like circles, squares, and triangles. For a challenge, try making 3D shapes like cubes or pyramids. It’s also a lot of fun to simply twist them together into abstract sculptures for display, using your imagination and creativity.

A no-mess painting activity for little ones? Yes, please! You’ll need a large zipper bag and some washable paints, plus clear packing tape. Add a few squirts of paint into the bag (one color, or mix a few). Seal the bag and add an extra layer of packing tape across the top for safety. Then, smooth the bag out flat, spreading out the paint. Lay it on a flat surface, and let kids use their fingers to make designs in the paint. Smooth it out for a clean “canvas” to start over again!

This is an easy STEM activity for young learners, and all you need are disposable pretzel sticks and marshmallows (the bigger ones are easier to work with). Show kids how to use the marshmallows as connectors between pretzels to build lots of different 2D and 3D shapes. Once they get the hang of it, they can design pretzel-and-marshmallow houses, bridges, towers, and all sorts of other structures.

Sneak a little learning into craft time by using letters as the basis for some adorable crafts! Turn an A into an alligator, a C into a cat, or Q into a queen. Check out this huge roundup of crafts for every single letter, along with free alphabet printables you can use to make them even easier.

Work out some of the wiggles with this active indoor play idea! Write different animal names (or pictures) on index cards, then shuffle them up and lay them face down. One player draws a card and names the way that animal moves. (Example, “It’s a rabbit. Rabbits hop!”) As they do so, they use that motion to go from one end of the room to the other and back again. Repeat as many times as you like. Animal sounds are optional, but definitely add to the fun! (Get a big list of animal names here.)

Take a cue from everyone’s favorite canine family and see how long you can keep a big balloon up in the air! It probably won’t pop if it hits the ground, but kids will enjoy pretending it might. They can bat the balloon with their hands, feet, head, or any other part of the body, as long as they keep it up-up-up!

Try this easy indoor play activity for preschoolers to give kids work on prewriting and fine motor skills. Use these free printable cutting worksheets, or draw dotted lines, curves, and other shapes on pieces of paper. First, kids trace the lines with a pencil or crayon. Then, they use kid-safe scissors to practice their cutting skills. This is a great way to use up scrap paper too.

Obstacle courses are as fun indoors as they are outside! Players can clamber over pillow piles, crawl through blanket tunnels, balance their way along masking tape lines, or hop from one tile to another. Add in a few activities that can be done in place, like spinning in circles or jumping jacks, and throw in fun movements for certain parts of the course (hop like a frog, slither like a snake).

Even if it’s chilly out, you can still garden in a sunny spot inside the house. Try one of our favorite indoor gardening activities: Silly Seed Animals! The video has all the info you need for this fun activity for kids to try at home.

Put a twist on the traditional blanket fort by creating a cozy corner for reading instead. Provide kids with materials like cushions, soft blankets, string lights, favorite stuffed animals, and anything else they need to make a book nook. They’ll love snuggling down to read the afternoon away when the rain or snow is blowing outside.

Put all those empty delivery boxes to good use with this indoor STEM challenge activity. Given boxes, scissors, tape, markers, and other supplies, what wonderful creations can your kids put together? Robots, castles, playhouses … the only real limit is their imagination!

Need a quick and easy game that sneaks in a little learning too? Roll to 100 is easy to play, and all you need are dice, paper, and pencils. On their turn, each player rolls the dice and adds it to their running total. The goal is to be the first with a total of 100. Increase the challenge by requiring players to roll the exact number they need to reach 100 and win the game.

Scavenger hunts make terrific indoor educational activities for kids. Try these variations:

Make your own star projector by poking holes in a paper cup or bowl. Turn out the lights and shine a flashlight through it (your phone will do in a pinch), then lay back and check out all the stars on your ceiling!

Combine imaginative play with learning when you set up a clinic for all of your stuffed animals. Kids can examine them, bandage injuries, or pretend to give x-rays or vaccinations. They’ll learn about animal anatomy as they play.

Sculpt letters out of playdough with your child, then lay them out on the table. Call out a letter for your child to smash flat! This is a great way to work on letter recognition, or for older kids to work on spelling. You can do this one with numbers too.

A simple deck of cards is an incredible math learning tool. In fact, a lot of card games involve math naturally, making them perfect indoor educational activities. From familiar favorites like War and 21 to new twists like Number Slapjack and Fish for 10, our list of 30 math card games has a little something for everyone (adults too).

Colorful blobs of baby oil bob, float, and merge in this easy STEM project for kids. You only need a few supplies for this fun indoor activity. Learn how to make your own in the video.

You can buy marble run sets, but you can also make your own at home with paper plates, cardboard tubes, and some masking tape. Use the instructions in the videos to help you get started, then come up with creative combinations and setups of your own.

Here’s a classic indoor play idea that takes patience but has incredible results. Show your child how to stand up dominos on their ends in a row, then knock over the first to start a chain reaction. Challenge them to create bigger and longer runs, incorporating ramps and props for an impressive display.

Give the classic game new life by adding rhymes. “I spy with my little eye something that rhymes with bear.” “Chair!” Check out more rhyming activities and games here, too.

Practice counting as you create a city skyline from LEGO bricks or other building blocks. Start by writing a series of numbers for your child to use as a “blueprint.” (Example: 3-1-8-5-9-12-6-14-7-6.) Then, stack the correct number of bricks for each number and lay each “building” side-by-side to make the skyline of Number City.

Squeeze in some math practice when you check the daily weather. Use pictographs to track sunny, cloudy, windy, snowy, or rainy days. If you have a thermometer and rain gauge, make line or bar graphs to show the changes in temperature and precipitation.

Take things a step further with weather journals! Make note of daily highs and lows, precipitation, and other weather conditions. Then, draw pictures to illustrate the weather, and write about how it makes you feel.

It’s fun to play in the snow, but some days are just too cold. Stay cozy inside and make these cute dried pasta snowflakes instead. Add glue, paint, and glitter to a variety of pasta shapes to create beautiful snowflakes you can hang all season long.

Fill a tall jar with water, then squirt a layer of shaving cream on top. Add blue food coloring a few drops at a time, then watch it sink down through the clouds and “rain” into the water below.

No snow where you live? A mix of baking soda and shaving cream makes a great substitute, and even feels cool to the touch! Get a simple recipe here.

Hang a bird feeder, or make your own by spreading some peanut butter on a pinecone and rolling it in birdseed. Then, watch the feathered visitors flock in! Keep track of what you see, learn to identify them using a local bird guide, and try sketching them in your own nature notebook.

Don’t just watch the raindrops trickle down the windowpane—try drawing or painting what you see! You can also create visual art that represents how you feel when it’s raining.

Turn kids into weather reporters and listen to their daily updates! Give them a map of your area so they can point out what to expect, and use a whiteboard to draw daily and weekly forecasts.