COVID-19 pandemic coupled with the monsoon season has aggravated most things for parents of young children. They’ve been struggling to keep their kids engaged in the prolonged lockdown period so it passes peacefully. Understandably, kids are not going to school or outdoors to play, which has made them impatient and cranky. If you’re also a hassled parent figuring out how to keep your kids occupied (and grab some peace of mind), worry not.
Here’s an unbeatable list of best indoor games for kids that’ll keep them engrossed and away from the screen. Rest assured, these indoor games are one of the best ways for kids to spend leisure hours. Apart from being entertaining, these games also encourage learning with fun. You may well term it learning with oodles of entertainment and fun that kids just won’t have enough of.
Here goes!
1. Sorting Indoor Games for Kids
This is one more amazing game for pre-schoolers that doesn’t require elaborate material and preparations. The sorting game boosts critical thinking among children as it’s about analyzing objects. It helps them sharpen skills like describing objects and also coming up with possible comparisons for understanding different facets objects can have.
Baby’s First Shape Sorting Blocks Sorter Bucket for Toddler & Kids
Colours: Colours happen to be the simplest and liveliest way for smaller children to get started with a sorting game. Arranging bits of coloured construction paper and taping them down and then gathering objects to match different colours set kids in action and learning with fun.
Advanced: This sorting game category poses challenges like identifying and classifying different textures. It could be sorting textures of different metals or surfaces or anything identical you can come up with.
More Ideas to Choose from: Go the distance by making indoor games for kids even more engaging and challenging by expanding their horizons. Host a group activity for a group of beaming kids by challenging them to hunt for around five objects of a particular category the quickest. You may also add a twist by asking them to arrange collected items in a specific order, say, alphabetically or smallest to largest in size the fastest.
2. Sensory Indoor Games for Kids
Touch and feel Boxes
The Touch and Feel Boxes game is one of the best indoor games for kids that helps them understand and explore the sense of touch and go beyond the usual sense of sight. It’s important to help the young ones connect with assorted dimensions of an object other than its colour and how it looks. Take a container like a box (a shoebox for instance), put some interesting objects into it, and tell the little one to identify the object by touch. Make sure they don’t peep into it during the identification process! Keep an object secretly in the box and have your kid guess what it is. Encourage them to ask questions and drop clues while the child is guessing the contents of the box. And while you are at it, you can tell your child to decorate the box next. She/ he can draw something on the box and colour it, paste some stickers, tiny streamers, or festoons on it or just about anything.
WHO’S ON THE FARM? (Touch-and-feel Tabbed Board Book) Board book
3. Bubbles
While Bubbles is quintessentially enjoyed outdoors you can turn things around and make it a fun indoors game. Get kids to sit at a table. Keep a few drops of dish soap in a plate along with a straw for each child. Add a little water in dish soap to create foam. Tell the kids to put an end of their straw up and down into the foam briskly for a few moments so there’s a layer of soap at the end of the straw. Tell the children to blow very gently so bubbles are formed. See which child in the group makes the biggest bubble, who can hold a bubble the longest, or who makes the maximum number of bubbles in a minute or so.
Image Mission Kikyosha 4m Bubble Science
4. Balloon Games
Keep the Balloon Up
Balloons are an all-time favourite of most children. To get them all excited and happy, give them a balloon game, Keep the Balloon Up, if you already haven’t so far. To begin with, blow some balloons and tell the children to prevent the balloons from falling and touching the floor. You’ll be amazed to see how this game keeps the kids preoccupied and even quiet. You just need to ensure there’s enough space as there are chances the kids will run and scamper all around with the balloons!
Balloon Volleyball or Balloon Tennis: A big balloon will do the trick for these exciting-sounding balloon indoor games for kids. For Balloon Volleyball, hang a net in the center of a room and tell the kids to volley the balloon over the net. The balloon shouldn’t touch the ground without it touching the ground. As for Balloon Tennis, big plastic spoons, spatulas, or even a fly swatter can be used as a tennis bat. When it comes to these balloon games, you need to take care of children’s safety especially if more than two children are there.
4. Tape Games
Balance Beam
Kids love challenging themselves with this game which you can set up easily in a cozy corner. Take a painter’s tape and gently tape down a line of any size and challenge the little one walk only on the line till the end. You can also use a soft balance beam available as a game for kids which you just need to keep on the ground for kids to walk on without getting down.
Angles: If you’re using tapes, you can glue them on the floor at different angles. Try zig-zag, curves, and some geometrical shapes to add to the fun.
Backward: Reverse the path to be treaded by getting the kids to walk on the line backward or with eyes closed once they’re comfortable with the initial round.
Twist in the Game: Kids can also try walking on toes or walk the entire line bouncing a ball without stepping out for more excitement.
Tape Maze
How about creating a maze on the floor with tape and challenging kids to compete around it in different ways? Hand over some tiny objects like a ball to the kids and tell them to steer it through the maze without crossing the tape lines. Keep a note of the time taken by each kid and. Increase the level of the challenge gradually and tell the kids to accomplish the feat in a shorter duration.
Create a Driving Track
Painter’s tape will do the needful for these amazing indoor games for kids too, which is about designing a road map on the floor. Most kids have quite a collection of tiny cars and loads of toys. They can be used to create a street scene as obstacles in which they cannot bump, or they’re out.
5. Movement Games
Charades
This is one of the indoor games for kids is one that we’ve played multiple times and know it inside out. It’s about acting out a name (e.g. movie name), word or an idea without speaking at all, can be tweaked a bit as per the age of kids for more excitement and fun.
Musical Chairs
Who’s never played musical chairs and won it at least a couple of times? Well, curate it for kids (it’s purely a group game!), tell them how to play, and make some arrangements for music to be played and stopped.
Twist: You can replace chairs with mats or thick coloured papers kept on the floor. Think of innovative ways of rewarding kids while playing this game to keep the spirits high.
Hide and Seek
Call it classic, iconic, favourite, or anything you like, but admit it, you’ve loved it since you were a child. Now it’s time to make little kids enjoy this fun indoor game. And to experiment with it big time, by playing it in a different format altogether. For instance, SmartGames Jungle Hide and Seek Puzzle Game, which isn’t like the traditional hide and seek you’ve played but something really innovative.
6. Scavenger Hunts & Treasure Hunts
Let the little ones embark on a process of discovery with Scavenger Hunt. This adventure game is about hunting for items hidden around the home. Kids have a lot of fun and also learn new words, concepts, and names of things while playing the Scavenger Game. You can make a list of items to be found a paper for each child or take a printout by typing them out on a PC. You also have the option of using flashcards with attractive pictures and illustrations in a game that can be purchased. Hide the items in exciting little nooks, give tiny clues, and watch the fun unfold. You may also reward the winner with a little treat to make it all the more exciting.
Colour and Number Hunts: This is another exciting variation of the hunting games created especially younger children. Take a white sheet of paper, draw boxes on it, and fill them up with different colours. Ask the kids to go around the house and find items that match the colours. They can count the number of items for each colour and add the total number of each to see what colour items are the largest in number.
Treasure Hunt with Clues
Here are indoor games for kids that can be enjoyed by one and all in the family. Bigger kids (or elders) can create a thrilling treasure hunt for younger kids that sets them off on a trail around the house (and the garden if there’s one!) in search of a goodie. It’s not just the treasure hunt challenge that’s exciting but also for weaving the entire hunting trail through clues. If the prospective hunters are too small to read, elders can draw pictures to give them clues.
7. Card Games
Card games are fabulous indoor games for kids as well as elders. Playing card games has always been a great way to spend quality time with family. There are lots of variations in card games available nowadays. You can grab a few, such as a Pictionary, and fill up hours of free time with all the fun these card games bring. Here are some of the card games for you to enjoy:
8. Paper Games
Paper Games –Engaging Indoor Games for Kids
Paper indoor games for kids are gripping, convenient, and can be played anywhere. They are amazing fun even if there are just two kids. Just arm yourself with a pen and a paper, and you’re good to go.
- Hangman – It’s an all-time popular word guessing game which is also a great way to build vocabulary. Kids have to guess the opponent’s secret word and be alert at every step. One wrong guess, and the hangman shows himself. Players have to prevent that by making the right guesses to win and keep the hangman at bay.
- Tic-tac-toe
Pay the amazing fun tic-tac-toe in a proper elegant wooden box game format instead of scribbling away on pieces of papers often with just one pen handy. Since it’s a portable set, you can carry it anywhere
Golden Feather Wooden Tic Tac Toe Portable Game
9. Quiz Games and Spoken Games
Alphabet Game
The perennially dependable and fun alphabet game gets players to create different themes and expand on it. Considered one of the most stimulating indoor games for kids, the alphabet game has been popular among family get-togethers, and can be enjoyed by kids as a group indoor game in today’s times. Take up any of the themes given below, take turns with each alphabet, and name things related to the chosen theme. For instance, if you take up the theme “Place”, you would name Amsterdam, Bangkok, Canada, Detroit, and so on.
- Animals
- Famous personalities (lots of options here- sportspersons, actors, leaders, etc.)
- Food
- Beverages
- Cartoon characters
- Countries
- Domestic items
- Movies
Rock, Paper, Scissors
This is one of the most popular and loved indoor games for kids in which one sees kids playing anywhere, anytime. Literally. Kids can play this game for as long as they want to keep boredom at bay.
Buy It: Here’s a truly exceptional, Futurist-inspired version of the quick-draw Rock, Paper, Scissors game with 40 playing cards and one explanatory instruction card. It has a surprise element too, viz. four special ‘BOMB’ cards kids won’t have enough of!
Rock, Paper, Scissors, Bomb: Card Game Cards
Telephone
A hugely popular indoor game for kids that need no complex preparation, the telephone has been a favourite game all along. To play the game, make the kids sit in a circle, give a funny, somewhat long-winded sentence to a child, who’ll whisper it to the next child. This kid will do the same and the chain will continue. By the time the kid with the last turn speaks it out, it’ll be a twisted version and result in loads of laughter.
Quiz Book for Clever Kids (Buster Brain Games)
Pick this amazing quiz book that a group of kids around you will love to plunge into together-in this sea of knowledge, curiosity, and discoveries having over 600 questions on topics ranging from nature, science, history, et al. The book has 10 different kinds of quiz such as ‘true or false’ and multiple-choice with three different levels, which will keep kids engaged for long!
This is a helpful list and you have something for all age groups. I liked the hide and seek game. Will check that out.
These are Some interesting indoor games ideas, bubbles and tape maze are a hit at my place 🙂
This list is really good for people who have young kids. Great post!
I used to love indoor games as a kid, in fact played almost all of the above. I still love and play Pictionary, Ludo, Uno. This post brought back my childhood.
These are some amazing games collection. Nice write up, loved the ideas
Thats a pretty comprehensive list of indoor games. Almost made me nostalgic of the games i played back in the day.
Your writeup took me down the memory lane of our summer vacations and these games played with our friends.
With Corona times setting its foot firmly in 2020 kids are forced to be homebound and play indoor games. Thanks for these lovely suggestions to keep them productively busy.
One more game that we used to play when we were 12 or 13, was the Game of Life. It is my favourite still now. Your list is a good one for parents to keep their children engaged.