3 Mess-Free Games to Have Fun at Home
Oftentimes when kids are curiously exploring and engaging in educational games for kids and activities, they can get a little bit messy. But after a long workday, dealing with scattered toys, paint-splattered surfaces, and slime and goop is too much to handle. If you’re looking to minimize TV time and clean-up, check out these interactive game ideas for mess-free fun!
Pen and paper games:
Let the fun unfold with simple origami projects. You can create animals, boxes, or other interesting things! In addition to expressing their creativity, your kids will also develop their logical and spatial thinking skills.
You can also spark your kids’ imagination with a lively game of Pictionary. This is a great activity for building both vocabulary and drawing skills. A similar option is the one-minute drawing challenge. For this challenge, ask your child to draw a specific object in under a minute using only circles.
There are tons of different games you can play that require only pen and paper, including Tic-tac-toe and Sudoku. You can even convert classic board games like Battleship to pen and paper by drawing an 11×11 grid and X-ing out ship locations. These games can be played anywhere at any time.
Augmented reality games:
Make screen time active and educational with AR iPad learning games. Adding physical interaction to screen time not only helps kids learn more, it also keeps them engaged longer. For example, Osmo’s digital-physical games make math learning hands-on and collaborative. Siblings can become business partners and run their own pizzeria in Pizza Co. and parent and child can create shapes with different pieces in the fun math games for kids such as Tangram.
Physical games:
Looking for activity for kids at home to release pent up energy? You can create a racetrack using masking tape for the lanes and start and finish lines. You can even add block and carton “hurdles” or create a bubble wrap runway to hop or run over. Finally, you can set up a penguin waddle race, in which each child must carry a balloon between their knees without dropping it.
These educational games are perfect for kids to have fun on their own or with family! For more activity ideas, check out the rest of our blog.
