Five Indoors Activities for Kids

Keeping children active while stuck indoors whether due to lockdown, illness or wet and stormy weather - doesn't have to mean turning your lounge suite into a trampoline park.

Movement is essential for developing brains, and children constantly learn through exploration and play. Often, this learning is their gross motor skills. It is a great idea to let your children explore their limits and capabilities, as well as the health benefits of movement and exercise.

However, if you have toddlers or your children are not part of a sports team, this can sometimes be tricky to facilitate - particularly as we move into the colder, wetter months. If you've noticed your little ones getting a bit cranky or stir-crazy, you can break up those moods with a little indoor movement.

It will likely help bring on a good mood, but physical activity is also vital for children's developing coordination and fundamental development - along with many other positives! Here are a few suggestions of ways you can incorporate movement into your indoor day:

Animal Challenge

Pick 5 to 7 animals, and have your child go once or twice up and down the hallway or across the room (whatever space you have available), moving as these animals would. Examples are a crab walk (scuttle sideways), a bear walk (on hands and feet), a snake (slither!), or a gorilla (use your knuckles) - get creative and have fun with it! Join in if you like, and bring some humour. Kids will love having a laugh with you.

Lucky Dip Speed Circuit

You can use ice cream sticks or pieces of card or paper and pop them into a jar or container for this one. Write an age-appropriate exercise on each stick - you could write 10 - 15 for choice. Examples might be 10x star jumps, 5x jumping jacks, spin around 3x, 10x knee raises, and hop on one leg for ten seconds. Start a timer and have your child(ren) pull out and complete as many as they can in the space of five minutes - if they want to keep going, even better!

Yoga for Kids

Yoga is a great one at any time of day and particularly useful as an evening relaxation activity. An excellent resource if you are comfortable using screens and have internet access is Cosmic Kids Yoga on YouTube, which is a free channel and storybook for yoga in almost every theme imaginable. Many parents are often astounded at how engaged their children are with these short videos.

Indoor obstacle course

If you have space, an indoor obstacle course is a great way to get your children moving and thinking - you can set a sequence for them to complete it and see if they can remember it three times! It could hop over the cushions, rolly-polly around the couch, hop back and forth slalom style over a rolled-up towel - again, get creative! You can make nice easy ones for little toddlers too.

Dance party

Grab a kid-friendly playlist on Spotify, YouTube or use your music - KidzBop Kids are a great one as they have current pop hits with modified lyrics that are child-appropriate. Clear a little space, wear some dress-ups if that's your thing, and groove away! Have a dance-off between siblings, or just freestyle expressive dance to your heart's content. We 100% recommend joining in on this one, as you might find it lifts your own mood, and it is a fun way to get that heart rate up. You might be surprised how even five minutes of movement can help to break up your day or lift your and/or your children's spirits.

These are only suggestions; there are plenty of other ways to keep active! And sometimes it's fun to don your raincoats and gumboots and head out puddle jumping. Try not to let winter confine you indoors all the time. Hopefully, you and your family can have some fun with these ideas - if you give any a go, be sure to tag @childlifeessentialsnz on Instagram and let us know how it went!