Ideas for Family Fun at Home

What did the shark say when it ate the clown fish? Tastes funny.

Why does a duck have feathers? To cover his butt quack

Playing with water is an awesome, time-honored sensory activity for toddlers and little kids. A water table is great when the weather is warm and the kids can splash outside, but if you are ok with a little mess, big bowls and plastic cups on the kitchen floor will do just as well. Lay out a big towel or two to try and contain the mess, but a change of clothes will probably be inevitable!

Car ramp races were big with my son when he was a toddler. Take a length of cardboard, draw a couple of lanes and set it on an angle (the bottom of the stairs works well for this). Toddlers can release toy cars at the top of the lanes and watch them race down.

Hide and seek is one of the best childhood games for kindergartners or preschoolers to play with bigger siblings! The person who is "it" covers her eyes and counts while the other players hide. The seeker must find all of the other players, and the last one to be found becomes the new seeker. You can play variations where the seeker must tag the other players, or where there is a home base that the hiders need to reach to become safe.

Sharks and minnows is fun, and it gets played a lot at school. Players stand along a starting line, and must reach the finish line without being tagged by the shark. Any minnows who are tagged by the shark become sharks, too. Repeat racing across until all remaining minnows have been tagged. The winner is the last minnow to be tagged.

Popsicle tag is the swimming pool game version of freeze tag. The player who is "it" tries to tag all the other players, who freeze in place with their hands in the air - like a popsicle! - whenever they are tagged. Players "unfreeze" other players by swimming under their legs.

Categories - pool style! - is a variation on pool tag, where the player who is "it" stands outside the pool, facing away from it, while all the other players remain inside the pool next to them. "It" chooses a category - colors, animals, states, Harry Potter characters, etc - and all the other players have to pick something from that category, without telling anyone what they pick. "It" starts to call out names/things related to the category, and if a player's selection gets called, they have to try and swim to the other end of the pool before "it" hears them and jumps in to tag them.

We buy small Graham cracker crusts (in the tiny pan) and add chocolate chips or pieces of chocolate bars. Then top with small marshmallows. Perfect on a grill or oven!

S'mores nachos: lay out graham crackers on a skillet and top them with mini chocolate kisses and mini marshmallows. Toast and enjoy! Add more toppings if you want too (i.e., peanuts, coconut, m&ms)

Set up a little frisbee golf course in the backyard and use a laundry basket as the target. The player with the fewest tosses to get their frisbee into the basket wins!

We recently discovered creeking from our park center super fun and free lots of activities too. I found it on the events tab on Facebook I’ve never done anything like it before but it was fun for my tot and myself .

Peeling and placing stickers. Sticker books are great for this - we like the "paint by sticker" series, though it may be a little challenging for some little ones. My 4-year-old is awesome at it, but my 6-year-old (whose fine motor skills definitely need work) struggles a bit. I also really like the Phidal line of reusable sticker books - the quality is such that they truly are reusable!

Placing letters on a letter board. I discovered this one by accident, but I love how it keeps my 4-year-old sitting quietly for long stretches of time while he tries to get the plastic letters to stay in my felt letter board.

Picking weeds outside, watering flowers/plants/herbs and raking leaves is a chore that my kids find fun. (Added bonus if you buy their own gloves/watering can).

Clearing the dishes after a meal, loading and unloading the dishwasher, and making sure that the dogs have their food and water.

The Chinese soft-shelled turtle pees from its mouth.

Tigers have stripes on their skin, too.

If you were an Olympic gold-medal athlete, which sporting event would you want it to be in?

How were you kind to someone today?