Things To Do With Kids

Sick of every member of your family retreating to a separate room with an electronic device? This post is your complete guide to screen free things to do with kids.

In this post you will find…

• Places to go with kids to do fun family activities
• Easy things to do with kids at home, both indoors and outdoors

Ready to disconnect from the virtual world and restore connection with the ones who matter most to you? Here are some simple ideas to get you started…

Fun Places to Go with your Kids

Get in the car, unplug, and go on a family adventure this weekend.

• Amusement Park
• Arboretum
• Art Museum
• Aquarium
• Beach
• Boat Ride
• Baseball Game
• Basketball Game
• Botanical Garden
• Cake Decorating Class
• Cooking Class
• Local Animal Farm
• Football Game
• Fishing
• Hike in the mountains
• Historical Museum
• Home Depot Kids Workshop
• Horseback Riding
• Horse and Buggy Ride in Amish Country
• Ice Cream Shop
• Indoor Play Gym
• Mountains
• Planetarium
• Professional, college, or high school play
• Playground
• Pottery Painting
• Putt-Putt Miniature Golf
• Science Museum
• Trampoline Park
• Local State Park
• Water Park
• Local Zoo

Things To Do With Kids

(Fun family activities)

Write a Story Starring Your Family

You don’t have to be the next J.K. Rowling to amuse your children with a good story. My kids absolutely love it when I tell them a bedtime story of intrigue and adventure with royal main characters that sound an awful lot like them.

Writing a story is one of our favorite rainy day activities. All the kids contribute their ideas and draw up illustrations. They have a blast imagining themselves as princesses and superheroes.

We always lose track of time (in the best way possible) when we get caught up in a fantastical family story.

Host a Bake Off

Any good family activity is always a little sweeter when you involve friends. Invite a few families to bake something creative and join you at your home for a baking competition.

If you’re brave, let the kids be the bakers. Make the parents the taste testers and judges. Consider using blindfolds for extra fun.

Instead of having winners and losers for the Bake Off, give out several kinds of awards such as…

• Most Creative
• Sweetest Taste
• Aesthetically Pleasing
• Most unique
• Surprisingly Savory

Our family is big on screen free hospitality. Anything to make memories with people in person and create community for our kids is a win-win in our book.

Go Yardsaling

This can be a great bonding activity to do one-on-one with a child. I know a Father-Daughter pair who particularly enjoy hunting for bargains and treasure at yard sales and flea markets.

If you are looking for something fun to do with your kid this weekend, consider taking them to a couple local yard sales. You could even make it into a competition to see who can find the best deal, the most obscure item, or the best books.

Pass on a Skill

If you are looking for things to do with your kids, look no further than yourself. Pass on a skill you already possess. Are you a musician? Teach your child an instrument and have fun jammin’ out together. Are you an artist? Teach your kid how to draw.

Did you spend your childhood on the soccer field playing for rec and club teams? Get out the goals and host a backyard sports game with your kid and some neighborhood families.

Are you a hair stylist? Teach your girls how to French braid. Did your grandfather teach you woodworking when you were a teen? Turn a few pieces with your child.

Do you love to bake and get messy in the kitchen? Make a book of family recipes with your little people and test out all the desserts along the way. Package up some treats together and share with neighbors, church family, and elderly folks at your local nursing home.

Your kids don’t need all the best toys and all the exciting experiences this world has to offer. They need you! A loving, intentional parent who makes a habit of including them.

Your passion for your pastime will rub off. Keep it lighthearted and teach your child something you love.

Play Pretend

Looking for things to do with kids indoors on a slow, rainy day at home? Kids young and old absolutely love make believe. You probably notice your own little people using their imaginations all the time.

Imaginative play comes so naturally to children. They make up characters and storylines throughout their whole day. Sometimes they are pirates. Sometimes they are princesses.

Once in a while, there is a great flood coming and the coffee table is their ship sailing out to sea. It does not take much to ignite the mind of a child.

Nothing delights my own children more than when I put on a good (not really good) British accent and pretend to be one of their comrades. I am not particularly gifted at the accent or at dreaming up an adventurous battle, but those details don’t matter to my kids.  

Whether I rock a baby doll with my three year old and pretend to nurse it back to health or sail the high sea with my six year old, turning a paper towel roll into a looking glass, my children simply enjoy playing pretend with me.

If you need a good indoor family activity, try with a simple game of make believe. Let your children create the storyline. Follow their lead and see where the whole thing goes.

Make a Scrapbook

When I was a tween, one of my favorite pastimes was scrapbooking. I would gather photos, scissors, glue sticks, stickers, and colorful cardstock paper with all kinds of cute designs and spend hours at our dining room table putting together creative photo albums.

Scrapbooking is the perfect family activity for bonding with your kids. Children love to look back at old photos of themselves and remember fun times together.

There are several different themes you could choose from to make a scrapbook together like…

• A general “through the years” family scrapbook
• A baby book for each sibling
• A vacation memory book of all the fun trips you have taken as a family
• A homeschool year book of things you learned together this year

Take your child to the craft store to gather scrapbooking supplies and enjoy this fun family activity as a group!

Play football and catch fireflies

You don’t have to be an experienced athlete to enjoy backyard sports with your child. Nobody in our family is particularly sporty, but we have accumulated a stash of secondhand sports equipment and we play informal games all the time.

The other night, my dad hung out with us for dinner. Afterward, he took the kids out back, helped them water their garden, threw the football around for about an hour, and then helped them catch fireflies by hand.

This is the golden stuff of a screen free childhood. Nobody wanted to call it a night and come in for baths and bedtime.

Sometimes the best things to do with kids are the simplest.

Build Something Together

There are so many things you could build with your child. You could build something as small as a birdhouse made of popsicle sticks or as big as a treehouse with real siding.

Not long ago, my husband built a wooden fence for our backyard. This quickly became a family affair. The kids were out there with tape measures and hammers ready to help out in any way that they could.

Think outside the box. You don’t always have to come up with entertaining, child-specific things to do with your kids. Your little people just want to be with you.

Instead of plopping them in front of a screen so that you can “get things done,” let them join in on the house projects you have to do anyway. Make memories building together.

Plant a Garden

As a low-tech family that aims to get outdoors for a minimum of three hours per day, gardening was a no brainer for us. My husband and I do not have particularly green thumbs, but we are trying to model a lifestyle of learning to our children.

This is our third year planting vegetable gardens. We have improved by leaps and bounds since the first one we started years ago.

All of our big kids also have their own personal flower gardens that they plant, water, weed, and tend to all on their own.

Learn a New Skill Together

A great family activity that promotes connection, bonding, and fun is learning a new skill alongside each other. Show your kids that the old saying “you can’t teach a dog new tricks” is not true.

This will encourage your children to be lifelong learners themselves and give them a new respect for you as a parent.

When you choose to humble yourself and be vulnerable in front of your kids by learning something new, they will be encouraged to emerge from their comfort zones as well.

Here are some starter ideas for fun family activities you can do with your kids:

• Take swimming lessons
• Learn an instrument together
• Go to a cake decorating class
• Ask Grandma to teach you both to knit, sew, or crochet
• Explore new places and learn how to read an old-school map
• Start hiking challenging trails together
• Try karate or taekwondo as a family
• Get some “How to Draw” books and improve your skills
• Join a family sports league or organize a neighborhood team
• Take an exotic cooking course together
• Learn to make sourdough bread from scratch from library books
• Get out some gardening books and create your first family garden
• Sign up for a family gym and learn how to exercise
• Try your hand at writing a novel as a family
• Reach out to someone you admire in your church or neighborhood and ask them to teach you what they know how to do well
• Go to a woodworking group and learn how to turn basic pieces
• Find a local spot to make pottery pieces together
• Get into art appreciate through visiting local museums and learning about famous artists
• Do some home remodeling projects together as a family instead of hiring them out
• Take a family dance class

Grab my family activity bingo challenge here for simple screen free ideas:

Take a Walk

Our family has gotten in the habit of taking walks after meals. We aim to dress appropriately and get outside, rain or shine. Family walks are an easy way to break up the day, get in exercise, and soak in Vitamin D. We always return from our walks refreshed and in a better mood.

Try mixing up your walks by changing the scenery. Take a walk…

• Through your neighborhood
• Around a local track
• At a scenic park

Draw Together

One of my favorite things to do with kids is to sit down and draw simple pictures. When there is no pressure for perfection, this activity is a relaxing way to bond with your family.

We have a Sunday evening tradition. Each of us has our own special sketchbook. After dinner, we cover the table with markers, pencils, sharpeners, and drawing tutorial books.

All of us make our own special picture and take turns praising one another for our efforts.

Drawing is a very low pressure rainy day activity.

Fun Family Activities

Grab a couple of these games and bond with your family without electronic devices.

• Candy Land
• Charades for Kids
• Checkers
• Chess
• Chutes and Ladders
• Clue Junior
• Connect 4
• Exploding Kittens
• Guess Who
• Hi Ho Cherry-O
• Kanoodle
• Kingdomino
• Life Junior
• Life
• Monopoly Junior
• Monopoly
• Pit
• Scrabble Junior
• Scrabble
• Scout It Out
• Skip Bo
• Sleeping Queens
• Sorry
• Ticket to Ride
• Twister
• Uno