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

What did the triangle say to the circle? You're pointless.

Why should you never give Elsa a balloon? Because she’ll Let it Go.

How were you kind to someone today?

If you could have any super power, what would it be, and why?

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

If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. ~Maya Angelou

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. ~Wayne Gretzky

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. ~ Dalai Lama

You've always had the power, my dear. You just had to learn it for yourself. ~Glinda the Good Witch, The Wizard of Oz

Read together. I love how it gives us a chance to cuddle up and be together without having to chase anyone around. Even my very active boys enjoy it.

Bounce a balloon in the air without letting it touch the floor.

Give your toddler an old house painting brush you're ready to retire and set them up in the driveway with a container of water. They can dip the brush and "paint" designs all over the driveway, the sidewalk, or the outside of the house.

Save a cardboard box or two from the recycling bin for your toddler to transform into a rocket ship, a playhouse, a sword and shield, a doll's crib...whatever they can imagine! I highly recommend getting cardboard scissors (to be used by an adult!) if you think this might become a regular thing, as they make it SO much easier to cut shapes out of your cardboard.

Capture the flag is a fun outdoor game for bigger groups, but a smaller group works as well - our family plays it with 4-6 players all the time! Divide the playing area into two territories and the players into two teams. Each team has a flag or other token which they hide or place somewhere on their territory. The goal is to find and capture the other team’s flag and bring it safely back into your territory. But beware! If you get tagged while in the other team’s territory, you go to “jail,” freeze, get sent back to your territory or whatever other consequence players decide ahead of time.

Four square has been the go-to outdoor game for us. Draw one large square (8-10 feet across) with chalk and divide it into four equal squares. Squares are numbered 1-4, and one player stands inside each square. Player 4 bounces and taps a playground ball into an opponent's square to start play. When the ball enters any player's square, he or she must tap the ball into another square. Any player who misses the ball, lets it bounce more than once, or sends it out of bounds must move to square 1, and all other players move up one square.

Ghost in the graveyard is an especially fun outside game to play at night in the dark. The object of the game is to find the "ghost." This is the player who is hiding. The player who finds the ghost’s hiding spot yells “Ghost in the Graveyard” to alert the other players as to where this person was hiding. The player who finds the ghost is designated as safe. All the other players must race back to space designated as the base. The ghost tries to tag someone else before they do and that player is IT for the next game.

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.

Air charades is popular with my kids, especially when they're playing with younger kids and everyone has a different swimming ability. It's a spin on traditional charades, with players acting out an animal, dance move, pose or other easy clue for other players to guess. The challenge? You have to act out your entire clue in the second or two you are in the air as you jump into the pool!

Keepy Uppy is an equally fun game to play in the pool as it is out of the pool! Just keep a beach ball (or two or three) up in the air as long as possible.

A ping pong ball hunt is a fun pool game for kids who like a little competition. Number as many ping pong balls as possible, starting with 1 and going up to as many as you have - 25 to 30 work well. Divide players into two teams, give each a container for collecting the balls, then toss the balls into the pool and have players collect as many of them as they can. Add up the numbers on the balls to see who wins! You can introduce a bunch of variations on this game for fun, like only allowing players to collect a single ball at a time, or assigning teams to collect only certain balls (like odds/evens).

Marco Polo is always the first game I think of to play at the pool! Whoever is "it" closes their eyes and wanders around the pool trying to tag the other players. Anytime the person who is "it" says "Marco?" the other players have to respond "Polo!"

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)

Grasshopper S'more: made with traditional graham crackers and marshmallows - and Andes chocolate mints!

Nutella, marshmallow and graham crackers

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!

The geocaching app is a huge hit with my kids! There is a free option, but the $6.99 option has more caches to find. My kids (7 and 9) have so much fun with this in our neighborhood and also parks and paths nearby!

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 .

Wiffle ball. We've been playing a lot of wiffle ball at our house lately. You can't really play baseball/softball anywhere other than a baseball or other large field, but the much shorter range that a wiffle ball can go makes it possible to play in a yard.

Doll houses are great for both boys and girls. It teaches them to be gentle as they try to set things up and play without knocking things over.

Dressing dolls, especially barbies. When my kids were really little this usually involved me sitting and playing/dressing dolls with them and then they gradually learned to do more and more on their own.

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!

An OT told me this one: use small writing utensils such as golf pencils and broken crayons. This helps prevent children from grabbing the utensil with a fist and encourages the correct pencil grasp.

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).

Loading and unloading the dishwasher is a daily chore for our older kids. When they aren't around to do it, my preschooler helps by handing me all the dishes from the bottom rack so I don't have to bend over as much! He's also really good at putting the silverware away - my least favorite part!

I started showing my children by having them wipe the tables and taking the dishes to the sink. They then moved to washing the cups and bowls until they could do them all. Then they moved to taking out the trash until they were cooking and dying it all. My grandchildren started the same way they know how to clean and take out the trash, they know how to do their laundry and clean their designated areas. I'm currently teaching them how to cook and how to do the dishes.

Disinfecting door handles is a good one, especially around cold and flu season. Once they're old enough to safely use disinfecting wipes, kids can walk around the house wiping down door handles and other high-touch spots like drawer pulls, light switches and faucets.