Playing, this activity is not only fun but it’s a stress buster. It keeps us all occupied and mentally relaxed without allowing us to realize its value. After a long day of studying, kids wait eagerly to go out and play. But given the current pandemic situation, going out is not very advisable for anyone. Here is a list of indoor games that will keep them away from fighting with their siblings.

Family Photo Game

Pick out photos of various family members and place them in front of your child. Randomly call one of your family members name and ask your child to identify them from the pictures laid out. You can do this for colours and places as well.

Yoga

Teach them various yoga poses. With the help of flashcards containing the name of the postures and its picture. You can play some music and even give animal names for the postures to help your child remember them.

Balancing Beam

An easy activity for toddlers and younger kids, which will help improve their balancing and motor skills. You can use coloured tapes for this game. Tell your child to walk only on the tape. The objective is to maintain balance. Ask them to walk only on one leg as part of the challenge. If they finish the entire length of the tape without falling, they win the game.

Balloon Ball

Blow up a large number of balloons of different sizes and colours. Play throw and catch in the house or around the garden with your child. This is a good game to exercise their body also.

Pitching Marbles

This game helps in improving your child’s hand-eye coordination. You can use any kind of container to toss the marbles. Place the container on a chair, couch or the table. Ask your child to step back and maintain a good distance to be able to toss the marbles into the container. Tell them to land as many marbles as possible into the cup. They win when they manage to land all the marbles. Either pennies or pin pong balls can be used as a substitute.

Home Band

Create musical instruments using objects from around the house. You can make a guitar using a plastic box and some rubber bands. You can even make shakers but putting some seeds or coffee beans inside plastic bottles. Use these sings along and have fun.

Bowling

Similar to Pitching marbles, bowling helps in improving your child’s hand-eye coordination. Choose an obstacle-free area around the house to create a bowling alley. You can use plastic bottles or soda cans as pins. Using a tennis ball ask your child to strike the pins arranged in the form of a pyramid.

Hangman

This game is a fun way to learn spellings and new words. You will need a chalkboard, some coloured chalk, a set of questions, answers and hints. Start by asking your child a question. Write the answer on the board leaving blanks in the words. Give your child hints and ask them to from answers by guessing the letters. If they fail to get the answer right within seven guesses, the hangman dies and they lose the game.

Pictionary

This game involves one player drawing an image and the other guessing the word. This is a fun way to improve one’s drawing skills. Write words on a piece of paper and put them in a bowl. Ask your child to pick a chit and draw the word without revealing it to you. Alternatively, you and your child could switch between drawing and guessing.

Sock Toss

Roll some coloured socks into little balls and tie them up. Place a bucket and ask your child to take a few steps. Ask them to toss as many sock balls into the bucket as possible. The older kids can be challenged by giving them a pitcher or a vessel with a narrow opening.

Indoor Obstacle Course

You can use many things to build an obstacle course. Like chair, desk, blankets, hula-hoops etc. Create an obstacle course using all these and make rules. Tell your child, to reach the finish line they have to go through the obstacles in a certain way only. For example, a chair, they have to pass through it from under it only etc.

Follow the leader

This game is fun when there are a large group of kids involved. Gather them in a circle and the leader stands at the centre of the circle. The objective of the game is to follow the leader. The leader can do any physical activity, expressions or gestures. This is a good way to get your kids to exercise.

Puzzles

Puzzles are good educational activity. Also, they will keep your kids engaged for a long time. For older kids, word puzzles would be ideal. For the younger ones give them image puzzles, explain to them that puzzle pieces when put together make a picture. World puzzles also help in improving their vocabulary. A 3D puzzle toy is also a fun activity for toddlers.

Snake and Ladder

Snake and ladder is a nice board game for children of all ages. You have to roll the dice to move your pawn into the spaces. If you move to the ladder, you can climb up to it, if you land on a snakes tongue, you have to climb down to its tails.

Sort Colors

In a bowl, put various colours of marbles and mix them well together. Ask your child to separate the marbles as per the colours and put them in different bowls. This game is ideal for toddlers. 

Card games

You can use a deck of cards and teach them some kid-friendly games like go fish, spoon, crazy eight, trash, memory cards, etc. Alternatively, you can use Uno cards.

Build a Fort

You can use pillows, blankets and set them up with the help of furniture. Stack some pillows on top of each other on both sides parallel. Place a blanket on them, to make it more spacious you can use cardboard boxes along with pillows. Decorate the place inside with some books, toys and other favourite things of your kid. On one side you can fold the blanket make it shorter than the other side and call it a blanket.

Dominoes

You can use a domino game set, stack them in a pattern as per your preference. Flip the first piece from the arrangement and watch all the pieces falling in succession. More number of domino pieces will keep your child occupied for a long time.

Ice Tower Excavation 

An ideal games for the summer. Collect your child’s toys and put them in clear water and freeze them. Using salt or eye drops ask your child to unfreeze the toys trapped in the ice.

Books

Keep them occupied with colouring books. Read them stories from picture books and keep updating their books once they are finished with the old ones.

Freeze

A fun and simple game for everyone in the family. Play some music and ask everyone to dance, when the music stops, everyone should freeze in the position they were in. they can even make postures of famous statues.

Paper Bag Skits

Prepare a bag with various items like toys, cutlery, ball, socks etc. and give this to your child and tell them to perform a small skit using the things from the bag. 

Hide and Seek

Ask your child to close their eyes and count to 10, the other members can hide until the seeker stops counting. Once he’s done, the seeker will try to locate the players hiding.

Vegetable Painting

Tell your child to draw anything they like on a piece of paper. Give them ladies finger and some paint. Using the ladies finger tell them to stamp its pattern on their drawings using different colours.

Science Experiments 

Watch some videos on YouTube and indulge your kids in making various science experiments like a lava lamp, storm in glass, snow fluff, volcano etc.

Treasure Hunt

A simple yet fun game. Hide toys and trinkets around the house. Write clues and hints on a piece of paper and place them hidden along with these toys. Provide the first clue, let him find them find the later ones on their own.

Hot Potato

Make all the children sit in a circle and give them a ball or potato to pass it around. Start playing the music, when the music stops the child holding the potato will have to leave the circle. The winner is the last one remaining in the circle.

The listening Game

This game will help improve your child’s listening skills. Place various objects in front of him and allow him to memorize them for some time. Using a blindfold, cover his eyes and make sounds from the objects and ask him to guess the object.

Bubbles

Fill a bowl up with water n immerse the dish soap. Using a straw give it a nice swirl and let it melt in the water for some time. Hold the end of the straw on the foam and blow on it gently and watch as he bubbles take off.

Head Pop

Attach a pin or needle to a cap. Tie balloons at various heights around the house. Tell your child to wear the cap and ask them to pop these balloons by jumping to pop them.

Simon Says

Instruct your child that they should act according to what you say, given you start the phrase with the words “Simon says”, if they act on a phrase without these words then they are out.

Touch and feel box

Cut a box with a hole from the top big enough to fit a person’s hand. Place a bowl of spaghetti noodles or potato or slimy goo in a bowl. Ask your child what’s inside by feeling inside the box.

Play-dough

Use can either use store-bought play-dough or make the dough at home using flour and food colouring. As your child to make animals and other things he wishes, using the play dough.

Cooking 

If your child likes to eat and cook yummy food. This game is a good exposure to feed their interests more. Provide your child with utensils or cooking set toys. Ask them to make imaginary dishes using the utensils, you can even give them cut veggies and other snacks to make it more real and interesting.

Dance Party

Using a tape recorder play some music. Use some videos of dance choreography to make them learn dance steps. Or you can teach them your dance moves. 

Magic Show

You can look for some easy magic tricks on YouTube and use them on your child. Watch as they get amazed by those tricks. Even store-bought magic tricks sets can be used to teach your child how to do magic.

Earth, Water and Air

Categorize parts of your house to earth, water and air. Instruct your child that when you say earth they have to be on the ground. When you say water they have to be around objects that put out the water, then when you say air, they have to jump as high as they can. A good imaginary game for exercising.

Musical Chairs

It’s fun to play this game when more number of children are involved. Arrange chairs in a circle. Ask all the children to move around the circle when the music is playing. As soon as the music stops they have to sit on a chair. The person still standing will lose the game.

Guess Who

On a piece of paper, ask your child to write the name of any person. Could be a teachers, friends or members of the family. You have to guess the person on the piece of paper. Your child can give you clues to make the guessing easier.

Chinese Whisper

It’s fun to play this game when more number of kids are involved. Whisper a phrase in your child’s ear and tell them to whisper the same phrase to the person next to them. This is a funny game because the phrase gets distorted during the game. And the message announced by the last person is something very different from what was said in the beginning.

Carom

This is a board game with coins and a striker. The goal is to drop the coins into the pockets of the board using a striker. The coins are all coloured differently with assigned values

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Teach your child to make gestures of rock, paper and scissors using their hand. A first represents rock, stretched out palm represents paper, two fingers represent scissors. Rock wins over scissors, scissors win over paper and paper wins over rock.

I Spy

Play this game with your child by starting the sentence with ‘I Spy” then describe the colour and texture of the object instead of naming the object itself. Your child has to guess the object in your mind.

Sock Wars

Make several sock balls and divide the children into two teams. Ask the two team to build forts using pillows and other things to hide. When the game starts the children should hit the other team members with the help of sock balls. If a child is hit they are out of the team. The last team with more number of players’ still standing wins the game.

Tastes like?

Ask your child to wear a blindfold, you can feed them with different variety of foods. Ask them to guess the food based on the flavour.

Art 

Ask your child to collect leaves sticks and seeds of plants and trees. Ask them to make some drawings and stick them in the drawings instead of using paint. 

Hopscotch

Draw the hopscotch pattern on a mat using chalk and hop along with the pattern. You can ever use patterns or tiles on the floor if you do not have a mat.

Mini-Golf

Use bats, cups and Ping-Pong ball to make a mini-golf course in and around the house. You can ever use tracks and slides from other game sets to form a course or path for the ball to pass through.

Toy Wash

Tell your kids to gather all their toy cars and bike in the bathtub and tell them that you’ll all play toy wash. This is a good way to make them clean all their dirty toys.

Snowflakes

Cut out white paper into small bits. Use a hairdryer to blow them all from the bowl to make the snowflake effect.

Marshmallow Toys

Give your child marshmallow and pretzels, ask them to build imaginary houses using these. This is easy and non-messy because they need to stick pretzels into marshmallows. 

Cookies

Bake cookies with your kids and allow them to use a cookie cutter to make cookies in the shape of animals or snowman.

Greetings

Hand out cards and stationery to your kids. Tell them to make greeting cards for all the members of the family and write a nice message inside for the person addressed on the card.

Waddle

Give your kids a balloon and instruct them to place it in between their legs. Tell them that they have to walk to the finish line without dropping it.

Balloon Blow

Give your kid a balloon and ask them to blow it till the finish line. This is a good physical activity because they need to do a lot of crawling and blowing to get to the finish line.

Spider Web

Using a sticky tape make a webbed design near and opening. Use lightweight objects like paper, threads, cotton balls, balloons etc. ask them to count how many object stick and how many do not.

Sticky Note Wall 

Write letters from A to Z and stick them on the wall or a door. Give your child a soft object to hit the notes with the particular letter you call out. You can ever ask them to spell words but bopping the notes with soft toys.

Catch

Use ping pong balls and plastic cups for this game. Tell your child to stand at a distance and hold the plastic cup. Throw ping pong balls at them one by one. Tell your child that they have to catch the ball using the glass. 

Mirror

Make your child stand in front of you and ask them to copy your moves, just like that of a mirror. This is a good exercise activity for you and your child.

Aeroplanes 

Make paper aeroplanes and throw them to reach the finish line. Ask your child to collect it and bring them all back either by crawling, dancing or jumping but not by walking.

Skating

Using a pair of socks your child can skate around the house like the famous figure skaters. They can even use mittens, paper napkins or dryer sheets as a substitute.

Mattress Slide    

Take a mattress and place it slanting towards the ground. Ask your child you sit on top and lift their hands and slide down the mattress while lifting their hands in the air.

 Shade Card

Pick out a shade card from the paint shop. Give your child toys of different shades. Ask them to pick out exact or the closest colour possible of the toy from the shade card.

Night Scavenger Hunt

Hide toys and objects around the house. Provide your child with clues of the objects and switch off all the lights. Give them torches and flashlights to find the hidden objects. Children will enjoy playing this game.

Tape Game       

Make shapes, letters and number on the floor using tape. Ask your child to move to a particular letter, number or shape either by crawling, jumping, dancing etc.

Balloon Tap

Hand the balloon a little higher than your child’s arm. Ask them to jump up and touch the balloon. But they have to use their head or elbow. Count how many times in a row they can do this without missing.

Balloon Hand

Ask your child to balance the balloon on the back of their hand and take it till the finish line. Watch how delicately they will handle the balloon until they reach the finish line.

Foot Balance

Ask your child to lie down on the floor and lift their legs in the air. Place the balloon on their foot and ask them to reach the finish line in this position. This is a good abdomen workout.