Games with children at home the importance of joint play between parents and children. Fun options for fidgets and calm children, playful ways to develop curiosity, imagination, memory, attention, and communication skills.
Playing with children at home is the easiest and most fun way to get closer with your child, create another lively shared memory, and work at the same time, according to the child’s age, memory development, observation, imagination, speech skills, communication skills, and other important qualities. . Well, if you approach the matter from the heart, then not only the younger generation but also the parents will be able to have fun.
Contents
Why is it important to games with children at home?
Adults are always busy. They need to earn money, build careers, and do household chores and dozens of different important things. And when you have a rest for a minute, you are tempted to dive headlong into the news feed on your smartphone or lie down on the couch in front of the TV.
However, there are things that cannot be neglected either for career or entertainment. And if you’re not sure the fun guys are having fun with them, you’re making a big mistake. Especially if your own children are still preschoolers!
It has been proven that at the age of 3, playing with a child at home is no less important than specialized lessons in preschool with certified teachers and psychologists. And in the future – at 4, 7, and 10 years old – shared active entertainment will always benefit not only the child himself but also the general psychological climate in the family.
The best games with the kids at home
Do you have nothing against giving your child extra time but are not sure that the possibility of making 15 applications or assembling a Lego castle 5 times will impress the child? Especially for parents who are thinking about what games to play with their children at home to have fun and useful, we offer a selection of calm, active, fun, educational, and interesting options.
Active games with children
Parents of small fidgets are well aware of the powerful activity that children can sometimes develop. They are not so easy to impress with drawing and construction! So first of all, it is worth paying attention to active games with children that are suitable for the house, which allows the child to safely dispose of excess energy for him and delicate internal objects.
The best option for outdoor games:
- Sumo wrestlers … This option is suitable for 2 children to play at home: put on the kids’ spacious T-shirts for the kids put them under the inflatable pillows you can find in the house and fasten them with a belt at the waist. It remains to mark the boundaries of the circle with a symbolic ribbon or colored rope on the carpet and fighters can be released into the stadium.
- Turtle race … Other uses can be found for pillows. Get the whole team down on all fours, stand on the “Start” sign, and put on the back of a small sofa cushion… And hurry up with your “legs” and hurry to Finish. The cushion must not fall! The main charm of such a race is that it is suitable both for entertainment for a whole group of children at a party and for one game of a mother with a child at home.
- A classic… The colored table will successfully change colors to line the floor in the hallway with the usual classics for jumping. Do this with the kids, so you’ll keep them busy twice: first by marking the future playground and then by fun jumps. And so that after the game you do not have to scrape the floor with scissors, or use masks, it peels off almost any surface without any problems.
- Funny darts … If there are 3m board stickers for posters in the house in addition to a shooting tape, you can safely draw a target on the wallpaper, take out jumpers, shuttles, and rubber balls from the toy box and challenge the younger generation in a competitive competition. Or you can move the target from the wall to the floor and roll balls into it so that they do not fly over the boundary marked with tape. Their shell stopped closer to the center, he is the winner.
- Almighty Scots … With a masked ribbon, there are dozens of games and competitions for the house for children. Compete who will jump further and mark the distance covered with a ribbon of different colors. Lay a long strip all over the apartment and walk along with it, like a thread, try not to stumble and it can be done either in reverse or in a “snake” and place your hands on the shoulders of the man in front. Putting table tennis balls in spoons and going quickly through the maze that is pulled to the floor – the one which succeeds first and does not let go of a fluctuating load wins a prize. There are many ways.
- Bowling alley … This is one of the most versatile games for children and adults at home because it has almost no age restrictions and the more people on the team, the more fun. Distribute old plastic pyramids and towers with 2-3 cubes in the role of pins; swap the bowling ball for a regular ball. And start knocking out your glasses!
- Try, step … The meaning of the game: one participant takes the end of a rope that is 1-1.5 m long and carries it along the floor, floats fast around the room and the other tries to step on the loose end with his foot. When he succeeds, players switch roles.
- Dance floor for ghosts … Everyone is killed in shawls, towels, or white sheets, but then they start ringing around the room and yelling in different ways. By the way, in addition to the task of entertaining children, Dancing Ghosts can rightly be called educational: at the age of 4-5 years, the game for children at home will serve to improve skills in space strategy. But outside the apartment, where the situation is unknown to the child, it is better not to play with it.
- Treasure Hunt … Hide a few small prizes in the house according to the number of participants in the game and give each clue. These can be stickers posted in prominent places, printed photographs of objects where the following clues are hidden or rhyming riddles. The meaning is the same: to solve each puzzle one by one, to look for signs, the treasure hunter must reach the end of the path and the main prize. But keep in mind that looking for an apartment is only good if you are going to play with your child at home or invite 2-3 friends. If there are 5 more participants there will be an uproar.
Do not forget to take into account the age of the kids. Older children are more likely to love classics or darts, while fun walking on a wire or ghost dance will seem ridiculous. But they can be a great choice for playing at home with a child 4 or 5 years old.
Note! Make sure there are no sharp-edged corners or delicate pockets in the area before you start playing outside.
Educational games for children at home
All children begin sooner or later to ask themselves the question “How does the world work?” And the main task of the adults this season is not so much to give young questions the right answers but to support the kids’ desire to explore and learn.
The best ideas for educational games for children at home:
- Paperclip Race … For the first time introduce the smallest (2-3 year old) family members to the properties of a magnet, it costs nothing in a playful way. Take a sheet of photocopy paper, place a paper clip on top of it, and move it in different directions using the magnet hidden under the sheet. If you put in a little effort and attach the paper to a stiff cardboard frame, you can organize a contest by distributing a magnet and a paper clip to each participant. Take them in a race for drawn tracks, let them spin, and arrange collisions.
- Lava lamp … Fill a transparent jar with 2/3 of water. Pour a trace of a glass of vegetable oil, which due to its weight will float on the surface of the water. Add a little coloring to the display and add a spoonful of salt. Oil, floating in colored water to the bottom along with salt crystals and rising back to the surface, will have a similar effect to lava lamps.
- Inflatable balloon … Pour vinegar into the bottle and pour soda into the balloon and stretch it over the neck of the bottle. Pour the baking soda into the vinegar. And when the ball starts to expand, explain that the reason for this is the carbon dioxide that is released when the soda comes in contact with the vinegar.
- Eruption … There is no doubt that the most interesting games with children at home are those where there is a place for creativity, new knowledge, and unusual manifestations. The home volcano fits into these requirements in all areas. First, you need to shape the mouth together from plastic or clay and decorate it artistically. Then hide a bottle of soda inside (2 tablespoons per 50 ml of warm water + 2-3 drops of pigment). Then pour 50 ml of vinegar into the bottle and enjoy the frothy soda.
- Solar system model and more … Various creativity, even not related to chemical or physical experiments, is a good way to provide young scientists with knowledge of the world around them. For example, at the age of 5-6 years, games for children at home can be turned into exciting modeling lessons. The solar system will be born from old bouncy castles, plastic, and pulp. From a box and paper towel rolls – a lock or a room box, which shows a child’s room in a thumbnail. From cocktail tubes – pipes. At the same time, you will have the opportunity to take a short tour of mythology and tell the children about the Greek pan and the Slavic Lele, who handled this instrument skillfully.
And we have not yet mentioned how many wonderful evenings you can spend at home playing board games for children! Depending on the material, they will be able to damage and give new knowledge and similar imagination.
Creative games for the child at home
Many children love to draw and sculpt, but the madman quickly gets bored with a measured brush on the paper and crushes the plastic. Experienced parents always have a few tricks in stock that can turn everyday activities into an updated version of an exciting game for children: they will not take fidgets for a day at home, but they will provide a few hours of silence.
Unusual creative pursuits:
- Edible paintings … White slices of bread, a few plugs with condensed milk, a few drops of food coloring, clean brushes, sterilized with boiling water, perhaps, and… that’s it. The creative process has begun!
- Frost pattern … To attract the attention of older kids, you need something more original than bread and coloring. For example, at the age of 10 and older, children can be given balloons and pastry bags (plastic bags with a cut-off tip) filled with more elastic than a plastic mass of egg whites whipped with icing sugar to play at home. The balls are painted with an arbitrary pattern and hung up to dry for 24 hours. Then the glaze is carefully separated from the rubber surface, and the ball is inserted with a needle and gently pulled out into one hole. The carved balls that form look good. You can eat them too!
- Rice … This time you should not pour the condensed milk into the sockets, but a spoon or two of vinegar. Then dissolve food coloring, add white rice and mix thoroughly with a toothpick. Once the grains are evenly colored, they need to be dried and begin to create an application on a sheet smeared with glue or double-sided tape.
- Unusual plastic … The good thing about simple but fascinating “cooking” games for children’s development at home is accessibility: everything that is necessary for them can be found in any kitchen. Mix softened butter with icing sugar in a ratio of 1: 6, season with a spoonful of sour cream or whipped cream, and add a few vanilla drops and food coloring to the mass and fragrant plasticine that can be tasted is ready. For older children, they mix inedible, but very pleasant touch, crunchy “snow” starch, and moisturizing foam.
- Unusual animal … Do not want to deal with plastic and paint? One of the most unmarked, but at the same time fun, creative and fun games for children at home is the following entertainment. One participant draws the head of an unknown creature at the top of the page and folds it so that the drawing is not visible. Another pulls the body to the desired location, breaks the sheet again, and moves on. The third one pulls his legs, but then an unknown animal is examined, the details completed and a name is given.
- Tell me how it feels … Invite the child to press their palm to the paper, trace it with a pencil, and then draw a few details to turn the print into something unexpected: a rooster with a comb, an octopus with tentacles, a ballerina in a skirt with ribbons. Not only children can participate! You can easily take an entire evening of fun competition by arranging family games for children and adults at home; you just have to break into teams and award prizes for the most original version of the drawing.
Note! Creative activity is not limited to drawing and modeling. You can make clothes for toys from leftovers, strings from paper hearts, and dry leaves, make a mosaic from colored paper that is cut into pieces, put up pictures of marshmallows or vermicelli or make a curved ribbon of dominoes to see how beautifully they fall each by others.
Children’s fantasy games
Developed imagination, rich vocabulary, and the ability to listen to the interviewee and pick up the thread in the conversation will always come in handy. And all this needs to develop from an early age.
What to play at home: games for children who develop imagination:
- Tell me a story … Stand by the window, pick random pedestrians and come up with stories for them. What is a man’s name, where he is going, and what will happen to him next? The more unusual the story, the more interesting it is. And here’s another similar idea for adults who need to suddenly calm the naughty toddlers: start reading fairy tales, stop at the most exciting place and invite the kids to come up with what happened next. And when everyone has expressed their opinion, read the fairy tale and compare it with the stories found.
- Emotions … Even with the quietest play at home, children can be helped to learn to recognize the other person’s feelings and are not afraid to express themselves. The game takes place as follows: first, one adult makes faces, conveys anger, fear, joy, and other emotions, and invites the child to guess them, and then they switch roles.
- Young Poet … Many of you played in the storms of your students’ youth, and now we propose to repeat the same experience with the younger generation. Of course, it needs to be easier to choose rhymes for children: kids under the age of 3-4 can look for pairs of rhyming words like “water food”. Rhymes 5-6 years old will deal with the lines “I walked in the woods yesterday and saw a fox there.” Well, for 1-2 hours of passionate play at home for children 7 years-10 is not a problem to add a few full-fledged four-part chapters.
Children’s games to develop observation
Basic tasks that children will do with pleasure will help you take care of the development of the child’s observation, memory, and reaction speed.
For example, such as:
- Find it lost … The presenter puts 5-6 items on the table and then asks the children to close their eyes and hide one item nearby in the room. Children open their eyes and have to identify what is missing on the table and find it using cold clues.
- Mirror … One participant in the game performs different actions: claps his hands, bows, makes a face and the second person facing him must repeat all this quickly. Then both switch roles. It is most convenient to use such games at home for two children: it will be difficult to keep a large company in check.
- Guess the touch … Several objects are hidden in an opaque bag and invite the participants in the game to take turns lowering their hand into it and guessing what exactly they got. The more unexpected things are (a toy from the nursery, a meat hammer from the kitchen, a pair of shoes from the hallway), the more interesting the game will be.
Finally, a little advice for parents. Try not only to entertain your child but also to enjoy communication. Be adventurous, take part in the fun not as an adult supervisor, but as an equal player, and willingly complete the tasks that have fallen to you. This will not only make children more likely in the game but it will also allow you to forget about problems. When it’s time to grow up again, the storage space of your memories will be added with another happy memory and your relationship with your family will be a little closer and warmer.
