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Check out these ideas for making something from a cardboard box.
Make mix and match creatures with this template.
Make secret messages for each other in Morse Code.
Have a teddy bear picnic.
Have a doll tea party. Put on your fanciest clothes and talk in fancy voices!
Look through old photos together.
Make thank-you cards for community helpers.
Cut out a part of a magazine picture, glue it onto a piece of white paper, and have your child finish the rest of the picture.
Use a hole-puncher and paper straws to build a toilet paper roll city. Be sure to let the kids do the hole-punching, as it’s great for developing their writing muscles.
Grab a flashlight, turn out the lights, and make shadow puppets.
Have a paper plane making and throwing contest.
Use a bucket or Legos and yarn or twine to make a zip line for toy dolls. Have it zig-zag all across your child’s room, or even throughout the house. Bonus points if you can make it work on stairs!
Stuck at home on a snow day? Once you’re done playing in it outside, bring some in in a bucket to paint with watercolors.
Put a bunch of random items into a box. Have children pull the items out blindly. They can either make up a story as they pull items out (1 sentence per item) or act out a play, which they make up as they pull out items.
Use painter’s tape to create a “spider web” in a doorway. Crumple up balls of paper “flies” to throw through it and see if they get stuck or make it to safety.
Use magnet tiles to make a maze for a ping-pong ball.
Make a house out of paper straws and pipe cleaner.
Turn your house into a museum: stuffed animals, rock collections, and items collected from a nature walk become exhibits in a natural history museum. Your child’s art projects become exhibits in an art museum. Toys like marble runs and building blocks can be set up as exhibits in a science museum. After creating the exhibits and their labels, your child can be the museum guide and give a tour to other family members.
Play a simple dot game with this template and a die.
Play a board game: write the names of all the board games you own on popsicle sticks. Place them in a small jar or bucket. Pull out a popsicle stick to determine which game you will play.
Make some homemade modeling dough.
Bake cookies, muffins, or fruit bread.
Make Oobleck with this recipe.
“Paint” your wall with water and a clean paintbrush.
Go on a color hunt around the house.
Play freeze dance.
Make race tracks for toy cars with painters tape on the floor.
Make your house into a jungle: create giant leaves, vines, and draw animals to cut out and tape all over the walls with painter’s tape.
Make your house into an arctic habitat: use cotton balls for snow, a white blanket or sheet, and cut out paper snowflakes. Draw and cut out arctic animals to tape to the walls with painter’s tape.
Make your house into an ocean: pin up a blue sheet or blanket, use folded paper plates to make clams and other fish. Draw and cut out seaweed and tape to the wall with painter’s tape.
Make your house into a fairy garden: draw and cut out fairies and glue them to electric candles or flashlights and turn out all the lights. Make flowers out of tissue paper.
Make perfume out of flower petals from your yard, shaking them up in water.
Paint or use markers to draw on shells you collected from your last beach trip.
Paint rocks.
Make a triangle bunting banner with colored paper.
Make paper bag puppets.
Make a marble game with a thick paper plate, tape, and a few strips of paper.
Make a magazine collage: themes can be specific colors, sports, flowers, your child’s imagined future life as an adult, cities, cars, animals, food, their hobby, or creating a toy store.
Freeze your children’s toys in water in cupcake tins for them to bang open with a toy hammer and butter knife.
Make a metal sculpture with tin foil around crumpled newspaper.
Make a 3D picture with cardstock and a cut open cereal box. First, draw an outline picture to plan it. Use one page for the background. Other people and things get cut out and glued to the cereal box edge, so they are standing up.
Make a doll treehouse with a sturdy indoor plant and a small cardboard box.
Make fruit kebabs.
Do finger painting.
Make origami.
Match patterns from magazines: cut out different pages in zig-zags, waves, or boxes and have your child reassemble them.
Bake gingerbread people and act out their adventures.
Paint with flowers from the backyard. Wet them and press down hard to make the juices come out.
Make some foam.
Make cereal necklaces.
Play I-Spy.
Make a rain catcher.
Make fruit juice popsicles.
Draw a treasure map and have an indoor treasure hunt with toys that you hide.
Make cards to give to friends.
Paint with cotton balls.
Build a playground out of popsicle sticks and paper straws.
Draw pictures onto 4-part label pages, then cut them out to make your own stickers.
Do potato printing.
Have an egg hunt with leftover Easter eggs to stretch out snack time (hiding grapes, individual cereal pieces, etc.).
Make your own sliding block puzzle.
Cut off one side of a cereal box. Draw a picture on it. Cut it into squares (this is a great opportunity to practice measuring with your child) and cut away any remains that don’t allow it to measure evenly. Take out just one piece and shuffle the pieces around, then move pieces around without lifting them to put them back into place.
Make paper dolls with this template on cardstock. Draw and cut out, or use leftover wrapping paper to create clothes for them.
Write your own Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story with this template. Take turns where the author reads the choices to everyone and surprises them with what the outcome is. Play over and over until you have exhausted all the possible combinations.
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