Playing is considered necessary and essential for children to enhance their physical and mental activity. Parents should be cautious when selecting new toys for their children, ensuring that they have an educational aspect in addition to being entertaining. Often, some toys end up being destroyed due to the child’s boredom with them and their curiosity to discover the components of the toy, leading to its destruction. Therefore, it is good to engage with children and nurture their love of knowledge through fun activities with them.
Activity Ideas for Children
Puzzles
Puzzle activities blend motor and creative skills, allowing the child to choose any picture they can draw, then cut it with scissors to create a picture puzzle game. The child then reassembles the pieces as they were originally. Ready-made pictures can also be used for the puzzle activity.
Freeze Game
This game requires attention and balance simultaneously. A musical clip or a children’s video is played, with children mimicking animals or cartoon characters. The clip is suddenly stopped, and children must freeze in their positions until the sound stops. Prizes are given to the winners. Children enjoy this type of activity because it involves movement and loud sounds.
Hide and Seek
This is a popular and beloved activity among children. One child covers their eyes and counts to a certain number while the rest hide around the house or yard. The counting child then seeks them out one by one.
Reading
Reading is crucial for children. Children who spend some time reading at home achieve higher grades than those who do not. Parents can encourage reading by engaging in group reading sessions or placing reading material around the house supported by enjoyable illustrations.
Smart Devices
Using smart devices develops many skills in children, including early education. There are many educational and purposeful programs available on smart devices. However, it is important to have a strict plan for using these devices, as excessive use can cause health problems for children. The content viewed on these devices and websites should be monitored.
Handicrafts
There are many simple handicraft activities children can engage in, such as:
- Playing with small water-filled balloons.
- Using beads to make bracelets.
- Drawing shapes on rocks.
- Using nail polish for painting and coloring.
- Making shapes from paper, known as origami.
- Decorating and painting T-shirts with paints.
Playing with Clay
Playing with clay is an enjoyable activity for children during holidays. Children can be given clay to make shapes of animals, plants, or cartoon characters, then color them with food coloring. Once the child is done, the shapes can be baked in the oven according to the provided instructions until they harden.
Gardening
Gardening is not just about planting a seed in the soil; it offers many useful lessons in science, nutrition, and patience. For pre-school children, gardening can teach them how plants grow and encourage them to eat the vegetables they have grown. School-aged children can be given a gardening magazine to learn the scientific names of plants and how to grow and care for complex plants.
Creating a Photo Album
A father can help his child engage in a fun and exciting activity by assisting him in creating a photo album that contains all the pictures showing the love and affection between them.
Conducting Scientific Experiments
Preschool children enjoy performing simple scientific experiments that do not require much effort to conduct. For instance, using candy and toothpicks to create various shapes provides an opportunity for children to learn many interesting things. For school-aged children, they can be involved in conducting experiments, ensuring that no disasters occur in the house as a result.
Playing with Sand
Playing with sand offers great benefits to children in addition to being fun. It enhances their sensory skills, shaping, digging, and building abilities, and strengthens their muscles while playing. Children can dig trenches, make holes, build mountains, and create cakes. All that is needed is an empty space with clean sand and proximity to a water source. Some adult supervision can provide new ideas for the children.
Group Game Ideas for Children
Look Up and Look Down
This is a group game that children can play in parks, schools, or parties. Children form a large circle with a little space between each other, then look down. The supervisor asks the players to look up and then immediately look at another player. If two players look at each other simultaneously, they must scream and leave the circle. The remaining players continue looking at the person they were staring at until the supervisor says “look down.” The game continues until only three or two players are left in the circle.