How are you and your family holding up during lockdown? While kids being always bored can be a threat to any parent’s sanity – everyone can use this time to bond better as a family.
It may be unusual for your kids to engage in stimulating conversation, reading, and other classic screen-free activities, but this can be the best time for them to appreciate what life is like before screens were invented. We can only do so much, watching the same shows repeatedly, or playing video games for the nth time.
Everyone needs to get some adrenaline pumping! Active play is critical for your child’s health. Too much screen time can cause kids to adopt unhealthy sedentary behaviour that can disrupt their sleep.
Why not take a break from binge-watching TV and staring blankly at smartphones, and have more spontaneous fun doing interactive indoor games?
Games That Need No Props
Get ready to use your imagination as you have fun playing these games! You just need plenty of good old fashion fun and giggles that can turn even the most boring weekday a blast.
Here are some battery-free games from Ivan Brett’s book, “The Floor is Lava,” which contains a hundred suggestions for indoor playtime.
“The Floor is Lava”
This game requires permission for players to jump on furniture in the house. A player yells, “The floor is lava!” Everyone must scramble to get off the floor. This game is best played at random times, especially when other people are in the room. The challenge is for a person to specify where everyone should go, such as the kitchen, without touching the floor.
“Control the Robot”
This fun game works for two people. One plays the robot, and the other is the creator. The creator barks out instructions like, “Make a sandwich!” The robot should do it like a machine. You can be creative and pretend that the robot doesn’t understand instructions, and the owner has to shut it down and reboot it. It also helps if the robot does robot-speak.
“Crambo”
This fun rhyming game might turn one of your kids into a rapping prodigy! It starts when one player asks the others to guess a word. When other players come up with their guess, the player with the secret word should respond with a rhyme, and so on, until the word is correctly guessed.
Player 1: My secret word rhymes with dove.
Player 2: Is it a glove?
Player 1: No, it’s another word that you do not love.
Games that Use Common Household Items
UNICEF even pitched in, with their own ideas for spending indoor time more creatively. They encourage parents, teachers, and caregivers to use things around the house as an engaging setup for the following indoor games:
Set up an Obstacle Course in the House
What you’ll need: a few plastic chairs, some big, empty plastic containers, a small table, a rolled-up rug, and some plastic cups.
Plan an obstacle course around the house (make sure that it would be safe for kids, and won’t cause accidents).
In a hallway, you can set up a chair for kids to go around and place a table a few feet off so they could climb under it.
Place the plastic containers for them to weave in and out.
Next, put a rolled-up rug on a path, and let kids continue stepping on them as they go through the course.
You can plan the last part of the course as a mini-challenge, by having kids stack up cups in perfect order.
Set up an Indoor Bowling Alley
What you’ll need: plastic cups (to be assembled as bowling pins), a small plastic ball, around 20 pieces of papers cut into small circles, 2 small jars where the paper circles can fit into, and a small handmade flag made out of coloured paper.
Assemble the bowling pins by taping two plastic cups together, and create 10 bowling pins. Arrange the pins like those found in a bowling alley.
Start the game by waving the flag, and each player can take turns rolling the ball to knock the pins down.
Each player must count the pins they knock down with each turn, and place the same number of paper circles (“chips”) in an individual jar to keep score. The player with the most chips wins the bowling game. Cabin fever solved!