Simple things to do with kids at home

What this site is for

It is four o’clock, it has been raining since lunch, and someone has just said the word “bored” for the third time. That is the moment this site is built for. Every activity here can be started within about five minutes of reading it, with things most households already have: blankets, cardboard, paper, tape, a few kitchen cupboard staples. Nothing needs a trip to the shops, and where something is a nice-to-have rather than a must, the materials list says so.

The instructions are written to you, the adult, not to the child. Each step says what you do or say, roughly how long it takes, how much help your child will need and how much mess to expect, so you can decide in a glance whether it fits the afternoon you are actually having. A printable step card puts the whole thing on one page for the kitchen table, and where an activity has a short video, it sits at the top of the page.

Activities are grouped two ways. The situation tiles above are for when the day itself is the problem: a rainy day, a snow day, a sick day, a birthday party to run. The world themes are for when your child is deep into dinosaurs or pirates or space and will do anything as long as it is about that. The same activity type — a fort, a craft, a pretend-play set-up — appears under several themes, each written for that theme rather than reworded from another.