50 indoor physical activities for kids
It's hard to stay physically active with kids, especillay though the winter months. These activites are great for preschoolers at home. When snow cancells school, school-age kids love to join in the fun, too! It's hard to get out of the house and do activies like going to the park. Letting kids run and play in the snow only lasts a little while. Bring the fun indoors and get moving with these versatile activities. Pick your favorites and play them all year long. These tips are adapted from the head start body start activity calendar. Try to do a new activity every day! These 50 indoor ideas to keep kids active in winter use a lot of creativeity and minimal materials.
1. Practice jumping. How high and how far can you jump? Bend your knees, reach for the sky, and land softly.
2. Work on kicking skills. Kick a balled up pair of socks from room to room.
3. Go for a walk, indoors or out. Practice other movements as you go--skip, gallop, slide, leap.
4. Find items around the house that make noise. Uses your intruments as you march in a parade
5. Work on cutting skills and make paper snowflakes. Then make a trail through the home and move around only stepping on the paper snowflakes.
6. Practice volleying a balloon with different parts of your body. Can you keep the balloon in the air using your hand, thumb, or elbow?
7. Go on an ABC treasure hunt. Search for items that begin with each letter of the alphabet. As you find each letter do a fun movement such as jumping jacks, donkey kicks, or log rolls.
8. One person starts by doing a movement, the next person does the movement and adds a new one. Keep adding new movements to create a movement sentace.
9. Turn on relaxing music. Stretch your body in different ways. Between each stretch, relax and breath.
10. Clear out some space in a room and roll from one end to the other. First keep your body straight, then try it with your body bent.
11. Practice throwing with rolled up socks--turn, step, throw, follow through.
12. Practice hopping skills. Hop once on each foot, then twice on each foot. Keep hopping and counting.
13. Pretend to skate on paper plates. Add some style and tricks.
14. Puzzle relay! Put puzzle pieces on the far side of the room and run to get each piece to complete the puzzle.
15. Create an obstacle course with pillows, blankets, and chairs. Practice going under, over, and around.
16. Sort toys as your excersize. Hop to get a toy, then hop to put it in a pile by color, size, etc. Then get the next toy. Try different movement for each toy--gallop, leap, skip.
17. Movement charades. Act out something that has to do with winter. Can anyone guess what you are?
18. Indoor snowball fight. Have fun throwing paper balls. See how high, how far, and how low you can throw. Pick them up and do it again.
19. Transportation fun! Pretend to be riding different forms of transportation--skateboard, bike, roller blades, train, bus, airplane, etc.
20. Scatter socks through the house. Pretend to walk on a tight rope between them. When you get to a sock, stand on one foot, bend down to pick it up. Keep your balance.
21. Pretend to float through the house like a snowflake falling from the sky. Float high, float low, float fast, float slow.
22. Build a tower of pillows and practice under hand throwing to knock it down.
23. Pretend to be animals who like the snow. Walk like a walrus, polar bear, penguin, seal.
24. Put mittens on your feet and "skate" aross the floor.
25. Make a hopscotch pattern on the floor with painters tape. Work on your hopping and jumping skills.
26. Have a winter dance party. Turn on some upbeat music and dance until you feel your heart beating fast.
27. Read a book and act out the story.
28. Using a laundry basket and recycled paper, make a bunch of paper balls and practice throwing into the basket from various distances.
29. Make a tunnel using blankets and chairs. Have fun crawling through it and running around it.
30. Make believe you are painting the house. Stretch high, stretch low, paint fast, paint slow.
31. Put balled up socks in a beach towel, hold on to the corners of the towel, and bounce the socks into the air.
32. Play follow the leader around the house, taking turns doing different movements from room to room--skip, gallop, twirl, tiptoe, flap like a bird.
33. Make shapes on the floor with painters tape--square, circle, triangle, rhombus, heart. Take turns calling on the name of a shape and moving to jump on it.
34. Play "Copy Me." Toss a mitten into the air and do a trick before catching it. Can someone copy you? Now you copy them!
35. Sit on a t-shirt and move around the room, using your arms and legs to push and pull.
36. Practice galloping. Use your arms to do other things--such as clap, wave, or snap--while you gallop.
37. Go on an imaginary walking trip. Walk over a bridge, crawl under a tunnel, slog through the mud, jump in puddles.
38. Find two different songs--one fast, one slow. Do a fast dance then a slow, relaxing stretch.
39. Practice rhyming say a word that rhymes with a movement, then practice that movement. Say "fun" and then run. Say "lump" then jump. Say "hip" then skip.
40. Do a silly walk around your house. Walk around while acting out different emotions--happy, sad, shy, mad.
41. Play a mirror game. Face each other and copy what the other person does.
42. Explore speed. Practice different movements fast and then snow. Slow walk, fast walk. Slow skip, fast skip. Slow gallop, fast gallop.
43. Turn on some music and run in place to the beat. Feel your heart when the song is over. Now lay down and feel your heart again.
44. Move like things you find around the house. Pretend to be a vacuum, washing machine, or blender.
45. Pretend you are floating around the house in a bubble. Move though out the house without touching anything. Try to get close and then bounce off without touching.
46. Make paper airplanes, throw them, then run, skip, hop, or gallop to retrieve them.
47. Make a circle on the floor with string or hula hoop. Practice moving in, out, over, beside, and around.
48. Spread out washclothes and try to move around stepping only on the washclothes.
49. Visit every window in your home and try to jump as high as you can as you reach and stretch.
50. Using a ball, such as a beach ball, work on rolling the ball around different parts of your body. Stand up, sit down, kneel, or lay down. Go aroun dteh whole body and different parts.
51. BONUS! Pick your favorite and do it again!
Leave a comment. What are some of your favorite indoor winter activities for kids?
