Lovely at home things you do

[ItsFineImFine]

Hi all

I’m trying to think of lovely fun things we can do around the house in evenings or weekends that are free/ low cost but that will become cherished memories of their childhoods. The children are 3 and 1.

So far I have

• baking cake for the week on a Sunday afternoon and licking the bowl
• walks to feed ducks
• reading books in bed in morning and evenings
• dancing to loud music

I would love other ideas for the weekends in particular that my kids will cherish when they are older.

thank you in advance

Make them into pies, or pizza, or sandwiches (use the sofa cushions) or tortillas or anything else really. You roll them out flat, you sprinkle on toppings, you chop them up l, sometimes they run away and you shout hey my pie is running away! Coke back pie! You have it them in the oven and then you eat them up.

writing that down it sounds bonkers but it’s reallly good fun physical
plqy

Turn a huge box into a den.
Hide and seek.
Drawing together, or any type of crafts. E.g. you cut pictures from a magazine and they stick it as a collage.
Watering the garden.
Family bike ride.

something my kids loved when a bit younger was a ‘kitchen disco’. We turned off the lights, played some good songs to dance too and gave them glow sticks. We also rounded up any fun flashing light things (my daughter had a floating disco light that went in the bath). Must try it again!

Disco bath! Glow sticks, we have some flashing ducks, I bring in the glitter lamp and put some music on

These are fab thank you! Love the bike ride and disco ideas!

My son loves building a den out of the sofa / sofa cushions.

Making play dough

You can mix cooking oil with flour until you get a crumbly consistency- we call it play sand and have it in a tuff tray. Great fun to use drink cups to make sandcastles!

My son also requested a 'crazy day' once. We did things backwards e.g tea at breakfast time then coco pops in the evening, he found it hilarious. Was too nervous to wear his PJs outside though or have a go at doing my make up when I offered!

Obstacle courses. So lay out sofa cushions and they have to hop one to the next, then do 10 star jumps, then crawl under the dining room table, then do a roly poly etc etc.

Treasure hunts. Give them small easy clues about where the next clue is hidden and then have a treat at the end hiding place.

I love that idea!

One of my stand out childhood memories was when my dad said ON A WEEK NIGHT that we could go to the really fun swimming pool. It wasn’t the local one, it was a bit further away and had all the slides. I can still remember the sheer excitement it caused. My cousins were over too so they came with us. My kids are a similar age to you and I’m now trying to take them swimming to a few different places every week or every other week. It’s usually not too pricey

Obstacle courses is a classic! Sooo much fun as a kid.

I also remember tearing my grans gardens to bits every week making ‘perfume’ from petals off her plants and water. We would sieve them and everything and had hours of fun at it 🙈 We would grow sweet peas earlier in the year and they were the perfume victims

Haha yes I loved making "perfume" out of flowers and water too

Another thing is maybe make your own bubbles with them. IIRC, it's water, bit of washing up liquid and glycerin...but Google will tell you more

Also, my mum used to do potato printing with us...so she'd halve potatoes and then either cut shapes into the flesh or cut out bits to leave some stand up flesh. Then we'd put them in poster paint and use the spuds as stamps?!

Never thought of the obstacle course thing before, will have to try it. Great thread idea op!

We make potions a lot. A bowl of water then add anything we can find eg squirt of hand soap, a sugar sachet, washing up liquid. Outside we play a similar game but then it's with leaves/petals and "perfume".

Bubble party with music and dancing. Ditto balloons!

We love doing glow stick parties. Particularly good in winter as it's darker earlier.
Dancy music, no lights and glow sticks.
We make up new words to songs we know.
In summer we chalk draw on our garden path with messages for daddy coming home from work.
Not a 'home' thing but our bus provider does £2 single fares so sometimes we walk to the bus stop (on a bear hunt) and get the bus to my mam's house. My mam will drop us off later. This sounds silly but as I have a car we don't get the bus usually and my little one loves it.
We also go to the local woods and try to find stick man, gruffalo etc.

Comedy night/ Joke night
Washing bikes together
Setting the table, dimming the lights and acting as waiters with menus they have decorated

Valentine's Day we did a treasure hunt around the house with clues for each other and a heart shape chocolate was the treasure.

“Floor is lava” is still a favourite in our house even though the kids are bigger - cushions on the floor, play music and when it stops the floor is lava! Or just try to get around the house without touching the floor!

Making “cocktails” with different drinks (non-alcoholic obviously 😂)

“Swap shops” the kids lay out some toys etc that they don’t play with much anymore in “shops” and then go shopping at each others stalls doing swaps for each others toys

”Who can stay in their den the longest” - put out a blanket each in the lounge / garden and “set up” a cool den each with lots of toys / books / teddies - then see who can stay on their den the longest. I used to give them a bell each to ring if they needed something and pretend to be a postman or waitress! A great lockdown game!

Quizzes - two teams - each write some questions for the others to answer - with themes - e.g. a favourite t.v. Show / book or who knows me best type quiz

”Imposter” - pull out of the hat if you’re an imposter or not, then try to figure out who is trying to “get” the others - hard to explain sorry!

Hide and seek / 1 2 3 in

Charades / Pictionary

Lockdown memories of trying to think of endless at home entertainment! I feel nostalgic for it now although it was such hard work at the time!

My two year old loves to help light the fire and get under blankets on the couch with me. We choose a big pile of books and read them together. Baking is always a hit too.

We don't have a bath at the moment but we're getting a new bathroom soon and definitely fixing that situation! Can't wait He loves his star projector so we'll do twinkly lights in the bath with lots of bubbles.

Low cost local activities that he loves are trips to the library (we go once a week to borrow books), feeding the ducks at the pond, a walk to the cafe for a babyccino and slice of cake, a wander around the local charity shops, and a walk to the beach.

Floor is lava

Den building

Walk like an animal

Hide and Seek in the dark (seeker is outside room in bright light so they haven’t got their night vision when they come in)

Blind mans buff

Bedtime stories snuggled up on my bed - which evolved into us all reading our books in my bed.

Mission impossible - make a maze of masking tape “lasers” they have to get through without touching

Sock skating

indoor bowling

pulling them around in an empty box
weeks of entertainment in the empty box when we got a new dishwasher (I don’t think they do boxes that big anymore)

wrapping them up in a blanket and

pretending it’s a package from the postman and being so amazed to find them inside

Making up songs as if we’re in a musical or only speaking in rhyme

My kids are the same age.

They love playing tunnels. We basically just pull the footstool out and cover it with a blanket and they both crawl through the "tunnel"

3 year old loves a movie. Little tray with some snacks and treats to eat whilst watching.

Painting. Cover the floor with newspaper etc, chuck them in old t shirts and let them go for it. (Have wipes and a bath ready!)

Kitchen discos

We've got a bit of drainpipe we put on a chair or something off ground and let them put cars down it

Pillow fights

Love this! We do songs with actions like Hokey Cokey/ sleeping bunnies. DD loves pretending a dragon is coming and hiding from them.

We have girls and we do nail varnish and hair wraps in holidays. They love to cook us pancakes on a Sunday morning, they're pretty good now. We also do treasure hunts where the game itself is the reward

Lovely thread. I have been thinking this exact same thing recently. Nothing to add but following along to add to a list!

My DDs (and DH...) used to make epic dens - using all the blankets /sheets in the house/many cushions including from the sofa, using clothes pegs and furniture/chairs to prop up the blankets etc. These dens sometimes covered the entire room...(sitting room or bedroom). Then being in the den for hours, with books /toys/music.

DH's mum used to do Easter egg hunts all round the house and garden with actual proper clues - slightly cryptic and in rhyme when a child is old enough, or very simple when younger (eg "where clothes get washed" - next clue in the drum of the washing machine. You could easily do that not at Easter and with some small treat at the end.