Over 59 Indoor Kids Activities when you’re stuck inside all day (that doesn’t involve screen time)

In this post you will learn indoor kids activities you can do with your toddler and young kids that doesn’t involve watching TV all day.

Stuck Inside with Kids

You inevitably will have a time in your life when you’re stuck inside all day with kids: Rainy day, sick day, corona-virus, no school days, snow day, the list can go on. However, that doesn’t mean it has to be a crappy day all day!

I know that staying inside with kids all day is hard. They have so much energy, and they just got to let it out. It’s so tempting to turn on movies all day, which, I’m totally for! We definitely have movie days. But there are those days where you’re like, “we’ve been watching too much TV lately, maybe we should try to limit our TV time today, so what the heck do we do?” I’ve been there also.

Activities can be hard to do with your kids because you have to do prep work, which can be overwhelming. I like to do activities that take little to no prep time, and luckily, with kids, it doesn’t take much. It’s easy to get caught in the trap that you have to do something extravagant for kids to have fun, but really, they’re relatively easy to please.

Here is a list of activities to do with your kids that require little to no prep, and I can testify that your kids will love it!

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Indoor Activities for Kids When You’re Stuck Inside all Day

Tape

There are a lot of games you can play by using tape.

We’ve done hopscotch. Make it a real challenge by adding more than 2 squares so they have to get their hands involved.

Make an obstacle course. 
A road map for the cars.

Lines of tape games.

There are all kinds of things to do with tape. Just use your imagination. Or even ask your kids to use theirs and see what they come up with.

Baking

Baking is fun activity for kids, and you get yummy treats. Here are a few of my favorite EASY recipes.

Cupcakes with easy Chocolate frosting
3-Ingredient Banana Bread

Pancakes with Muffin Mix
Apple Turnovers
Sugar Cookies (these are a little more complicated, but at least they can decorate after)
Nutter Butter Cheerios
S’More Dip
Rice Krispie Cheerios

Balloons

There are several activities that you can do with balloons that involve hardly any prep time (unless you include blowing it up).

Balloon Volleyball: Depending on how rowdy you want to get.
Balloon Hot Potato: The same concept with a ball, but it’s a balloon.
Keep the Balloon in the air: Who didn’t play this game as a kid?
Penguin races: Walk like a penguin by putting the balloon between your legs. Have the kids race.
Balloon Toss: Tossing the balloon around. You could make it different by using only your head, elbow, or feet.
Paper Mache Balloons

Balloon Rockets

Balloon rockets involve a little more prep work, but not much. It is pretty cool. It makes a good science lesson, and my three year old was fascinated. He wanted to do it over and over again. I was getting pretty light headed.

Bubbles

What kid doesn’t love bubbles! I would highly invest in a bubble maker. (This one is one of my favorites because it’s not messy. Be careful because some of them can be messy.) You can even make your own bubble solution.

Foaming Bubbles

Super easy and fun activity is foaming bubbles. It’s like a bubble bath without the water. They are so fun to play in, even as an adult, and they are super easy to make.

Wash Toys

You could have them wash their toys. Throw them all in a huge bin with soap and water and have them wash them with a toothbrush. It’s fun, and their toys are getting clean. These are great during the winter season with colds going around, or when you have a world Pandemic.

Water Play

Going along with washing toys, you could just throw some water and bubble bath into a small bin with some bath toys and have water play. My toddler loves playing with water, so this is a huge hit in our house. Especially when I just need to get something done and keep him entertained.

Board games

Some of our favorites are Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, Skipbo, Uno, Hoot Owl Hoot, Click Clack Lumber Jack or Guess Who. I’ve had my eye on the Floor is Lava game, kids play that anyway, so making a game out of it is fun!

Printable Sheets

Some easy and fun games are hangman, tic tac toe, or dots. You can download those all for FREE here.

Children’s Games

Don’t forget the classic games like:

Simon Says
Mother May I?
Red light, Green light
Hide and Seek (an absolute favorite in our house, and probably a weekly occurrence)
Sardines
Marco Polo
Hug Game – My kids loved this game. It only takes a few minutes, but if any of your kids are feeling down, play this. Have everyone sit on the couch. Pick one person to go across the room. When you say go, have them run across the room full speed and hug someone sitting on the couch. (with your discretion of how fast). Repeat until your hearts content.

Kid’s Questions

You could ask Would You Rather questions or Kids Jokes. This also creates good bonding time. You can download my free Would you rather cards and kids joke cards.

Make up and Hair

Let your kids do your make up and hair, or nails. They love it. We try to always have some play makeup around.

Indoor Kids Activities with Alexa

Alexa has a ton of fun kids games. Our favorites are Freeze Dance: she’ll play music and stop when you need to freeze. She even gives you ideas of how to dance. Open the Magic door: She takes you on an adventure and you get to pick what to do as you go. 20 Questions: try to stump Alexa with a 20 questions game. Explore even more games on Alexa.

Science Experiments

Who doesn’t want to seem extra smart with their kids? We did 9 simple science experiments that are so easy anybody can do them. AND all of them are done with household items. You can find them here: 9 Simple Science Experiments for Kids with Household Items.

Easy Painting Crafts

Kids love to paint, and there are so many different ways to paint:

Balloon Painting
Painting with homemade stamps
Q-tip Painting
Egg Carton Bugs Craft
Balloon Paper Mache
Painting with Cars

If you don’t want to do a lot of prep work, then just give them some paper and paint, and let them go to town.

Make Cards

This is a great time to make a Get Well or Thinking About You card for someone. They can be really simple, just have them draw a picture and fold it up.

Minute to Win it games

Minute to Win it games are a huge hit with kids. They do require a little more preparation, but if you’re feeling up for it, most of them can be done with what is lying around your house.

Dice Games

There are so many different ways you can play with dice. This is a great list of dice games that are educational, cheap, and fun! One that we did recently was an exercise dice game.

You pick an exercise for each number on the dice, then you roll the dice and do the number it says. Ours went something like this:

1 = 1 push up
2 = 2 jumping jacks
3 = 3 Squats
4 = 4 Hops
5 = 5 arm circles
6 = 6 laps (around our house) The kids loved this one!

Simple Crafts

You can always do crafts. These take a little more prep work, but it could be as simple as painting a piece of paper. (as listed above). Here are some simple crafts that don’t take a lot of prep work or require you to have a lot of supplies on hand:

Airplane Craft
Homemade Stamps
Microwave Puffy Paint
Streamer Rainbows
Salad Spinner Fireworks
Paper Dream Catchers
Toilet Paper Binoculars 
Milk Jug Fairy House
Pasta Necklaces
Paper Straw Tulip

Related: Kids Activities for When You’re an Exhausted Mom

Related: Q-tip Painting for Toddlers

Related: 31 Ten Minutes Crafts that are Super Easy