Easy Activities For Children

One thing we all hate is lack of sleep due to your little one having a bad night.

Then throw in some hyperactive children, a headache and tantrums – not pleasant is it?!

Fear not, your fairy godmother is here to assist you in a fun and quiet afternoon. Get ready to have your first hot cup of tea!

Below I’ve listed some (hopefully) helpful and easy things to do with your children so you can tire them out ready for their (your) nap time.  You’ll be happy to know that they are all nice and quiet activities too – whoop!

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Baking

This is something you can do whenever you like and with only a few ingredients needed. Have fun decorating using anything from icing sugar to hundreds and thousands. Easy, fun and best of all you get to lick the spoon after, yummm. A trick I found from my mum was to weigh the eggs first and whatever they weighed, make the butter, flour and caster sugar all the same weight. I did this for both cupcakes and cakes which have all came out perfectly light and yummy!

All you need is…

Flour
Caster sugar
Eggs
Butter
Icing sugar
Edible spinkles

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Edible coloured bread

This is something we all have lying around in our houses. Bread. Somehow children want bread with everything. For breakfast, lunch and dinner, you can even have bread and butter pudding. Bread it’s the be all and end all of this world. Simply fill pots with water and food colouring and let your little ones create their own bread masterpieces! 

Image credit: Teach Preschool

So all you’ll need for this is:

Granulated Sugar
Food Colouring
Some bowls or pots
Brushes
And you guessed it, BREAD.

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Potato stamping

When I was a child (which wasn’t that long ago because I’m only 21) but when I was a child, this is something I did and loved. Every big shop we did, my mum would buy the biggest bag of potatoes she could find which we never got around to ever finishing off. So she used to cut them out into shapes, pass us some paper and paint then left us to conjure up all sorts of pictures.

What you’ll need to have:

Those excess potatoes you have lying around (the ones growing stems are best)
Paint colours
And white card/paper

*Please make sure that adults or older children do the cutting part – those potatoes can be tough to cut!

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Rocks

I know you’ve read this heading and gone, ‘rocks, is she mad?… Rocks?’ Yes. I said rocks. Another favourite childhood memory was picking up stones from the drive (we had a cobble drive) and painting them into silly faces, food to play tea parties with and people to be used in my bedtime stories. They are also good for learning to teach the alphabet or their counting.

The items you need:

Rocks
Paint
Wobbly eyes
PVA glue

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Origami

It’s amazing how many things you can create using a piece of paper like this gorgeous paper flower below! One thing I do remember making at home and school was the ‘Fortune Teller’. You know the one where you have to ask the other person to pick a number and eventually you lift the paper flap to tell them their future. This is guaranteed time consumer for your children and will keep them quiet up in their rooms whilst they play together.

Check out this brilliant step by step guide here.

All you will need is:

Paper or coloured paper
Pen to write in the inside of the Fortune Teller

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Den making

I’m sure adults get more excited over this then children do, because you are essentially letting out your inner child. You can do this in your living room, either your room or your children’s. Add a cover over the top of your stacked pillows and you have your fort. You can both defend the castle or make it into a suitable napping station.

All you will need is:

Blankets
Pillows
Snacks

What activities do you like to do with your children? Let us know in the comments below.