Things to do with 5 year olds

101 awesome activities for kids ages 5 to 8

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These activities for 5-year-olds and older are perfect for staving off boredom.

Do you struggle with thinking of fun activities to keep your child entertained on the weekends and after school? You’re not alone! It can certainly be difficult to come up with unique activities for kids. And although it might be easy to just pop in a movie or allow your little one to play games on the tablet, psychologist and play expert Dr. Jacqueline Chinappi, of South University in Savannah, Georgia, urges you to remember that too much screen time can contribute to behavioral problems, obesity and attention issues.

In today’s digital world, this is a growing concern. In fact, according to Dr. Anne Fishel, of the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, children around 8 years old at times have up to 11 hours of screen time per day.

Help your little one exercise their mind and body by trying out these 101 fun activities for 5- to 8-year-olds.

1. Make a batch of homemade play dough.
2. Go on a nature walk and collect leaves or rocks.
3. Move the furniture around so your little gymnast can practice their tumbles.
4. Play “Go Fish.”
5. Make a fort out of blankets and pillows.
6. Plant flowers in the garden.
7. Camp out in the backyard.
8. Read a classic children’s book out loud together.

9. Learn to ride a bike.
10. Go berry picking.
11. Bake a pie using your freshly picked berries.
12. Grab some binoculars and go birdwatching.
13. Learn how to play the recorder.
14. Make sock puppets.
15. Press flowers and put them in a scrapbook.
16. Build a model airplane.

17. Learn how to knit.
18. Visit your local zoo.
19. Visit a farmers’ market.
20. Play dress-up.
21. Learn how to braid hair.
22. Grab some chalk and decorate the sidewalk.
23. Have an outdoor picnic.
24. Observe insects through a magnifying glass.

25. Is it raining? Have a picnic indoors instead!
26. Visit animals at a pet store. (Just try not to bring them all home!)
27. Make a map of your house or apartment.
28. Learn how to jump rope.
29. Make a guitar out of a box and rubber bands.
30. Visit your neighbors.
31. Bake brownies.
32. Pop some popcorn, and snuggle up to watch some home movies.

33. Plant a vegetable garden.
34. Build a snowman.
35. Have a snowball fight.
36. Make a pizza with all your favorite toppings.
37. Visit a pumpkin patch.
38. Make friendship bracelets.
39. Turn a pine cone into a bird feeder by adding some peanut butter and birdseed.
40. Learn a magic trick.

41. Cut out homemade paper dolls.
42. Play freeze tag.
43. Play “Simon Says.”
44. Interview a grandparent.
45. Get out a bag of hair ties and create some fun hairdos.
46. Go to the library.
47. Go on a hike.
48. Build a sandcastle.

49. Have a tea party with real tea and snacks.
50. Cut out pictures from magazines to make a collage.
51. Play “Red Light/Green Light.”
52. Color!
53. Write an original song.
54. Take turns drawing each other’s portraits.
55. Paint each other’s fingernails.
56. Play “Hide-and-Seek.”

57. Teach your dog or cat how to do some tricks.
58. Make your own bubble solution.
59. Lay out an ice cream sundae bar.
60. Play “Follow the Leader.”
61. Tie-dye T-shirts.
62. Have a fashion show.
63. Feed ducks at a local pond or lake.
64. Make shadow puppets on the wall.

65. Play a board game.
66. Turn craft foam into bath floats.
67. Make pinch pots out of air-dry clay.
68. Slice apples and turn them into paint stamps.
69. Turn your living room into a winter wonderland with toilet paper, cotton balls and pillows.
70. Break out your makeup and let your child give you a new look.
71. Put on a play.
72. Do a word search.
73. Visit a local farm.
74. Run through a sprinkler.

75. Make nature crafts.
76. Learn how to hula hoop.
77. Make muffin tin crayons.
78. Cut snowflakes out of paper.
79. Play mini golf.
80. Make hot chocolate.
81. Lie down in your backyard, and talk about the shapes you see in the clouds.
82. Create a secret handshake.
83. Go fishing.
84. Put together a puzzle.

85. Play musical chairs.
86. Learn how to do a cartwheel.
87. Make rainbow foam.
88. Create a paper chain with colorful construction paper.
89. Learn how to play checkers.
90. Make a drum out of an oatmeal container.
91. Visit a science museum.
92. Learn a new language.
93. Make leaf and tree rubbings with paper and crayons.
94. Catch fireflies.

95. Go for a drive with no destination.
96. Make a sundial out of paper plates.
97. Play “Duck, Duck, Goose.”
98. Build a dream house out of Legos.
99. Have your child write a letter to her favorite book character.
100. Do a crossword puzzle.
101. Find rocks outside and paint them.

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55+ Easy Activities for 5 Year Olds

AHEAD: Banish boredom in your house with these 55+ super fun hands on and easy activities and crafts for 5 year olds or kindergartners.

Do you have a 5 year old or kindergartner at home? Then this is the ultimate list for you. Here are 55+ amazing activity ideas to do with your 5 year old or kindergartner. From building an aquarium to making 2 ingredient silly putty to making paper houses and cork boats, there are tons and tons of really cool ideas your 5 year old will love.

This amazing list is organized into 4 sections:

1. Boredom Busting Activities
2. Arts & Crafts
3. Fun Learning Activities
4. Sensory Activities

OK Let the fun begin!

Boredom Busting Activities for 5 Year Olds

1. Make a chalk maze – create a maze for toy cars using sidewalk chalk

2. Build a backyard obstacle course outside.

3. Build a fort – used blankets, cushions and chairs to build the ultimate retreat nook. Dontas forget to add lots and lots of books!

4. Build a marble Run – use cardboard, construction paper, tape and marbles. Roll the construction paper up to make a tube and tape them to the cardboard to make a marble run.

5. Make silly putty.

6. Giant Dots and Boxes.

7. Play with giant water beads.

8. Nature Tea Party – Collect things from your backyard like rocks, leaves, dirt and flowers to make a nature tea using your favourite tea set or a jug and cups.

9. Spray Bottle Water Fights.

10. Magnetic Tile Ramps.

11. DIY Post-It Dominoes.

Arts & Crafts for 5 Year Olds

12. Three Marker Colouring Challenge – Close your eyes and choose three markers from a pile. Use those colours and only those three colours to colour a favourite coloring page.

13. Make crazy hats – Construction paper, tape and scissors. Create the craziest looking hats you can using cut out lighten bolts, spirals, and different shapes.

14. Make a paper house.

15. Build Easter Egg Boats

16. Draw to music.

17. Giant Nail Painting Activity.

18. Make a garden sensory bottle.

19. Paint Kindness Rocks – paint rocks using washable paints and brushes and once dry write kind messages on them.

20. Textured Rainbow Sun Catcher Craft

21. Family Portrait Sticky Wall.

22. Make An Aquarium.

23. Cardboard Picture Frame Craft

24. Giant Baby Doll Colouring – Not into baby dolls? Trace cars and trucks to decorate them!

25. Textured Heart Sun Catcher Craft

26. Potato Masher Ice Cream Craft

27. Gems and Water Colour Flower Craft

Fun Learning Activities for 5 Year Olds

28. Baby Doll Haircuts.

29. Colour by Addition – Parents write simple addition or subtraction problems in each section of a colouring paper. Then create a key idenifitin which colour each answer should be. For instance if the answer is 3 then colour that second red.

30. Shaving Cream Sight Word Game.

31. Build The Alphabet Sticky Wall

32. Spray Bottle Letters – use a spray bottle to make letters on a fence or on a sidewalk.

33. Ice Cream Skip Counting Sticky Wall – Supplies: contact paper, masking tape, foam sheets, scissors and black sharpie.

34. Build A Magnetic Tile Clock – use magnetic tiles to make a giant clock. Use post it notes for the numbers or washable chalk markers.

35. Rubber Duck Math Race

36. DIY Egg Carton Ten-Frame Game

37. Magnetic Tile Ten Frame Game

38. Ocean Sight Word Sensory Bin

39. Ten Frame Sensory Bag

40. Dot Sticker Sight Words

41. One More One Less with Dot Stickers

42. Post-it Memory Game

43. Mystery Math: A Crayon Resist Activity

44. Toilet Paper Roll Skip Counting

Sensory Activities for 5 Year olds

45. Cork Boat Sensory Bin – make boats out of corks, elastic bands, toothpicks and foam sheets for the sails. Fill a sensory bin with water and blue food colouring, fish, sharks and sea shells.

46. Ocean Sensory Bottles

47. Wash the Horses Sensory Bin – fill a sensory bin with water and bubble bath to make bubbles. Add horse toys, combs and wash clothes.

48. Cloud Dough Kitchen

49. Textured Playdough Activity

50. One- Step Slime Sensory Bin

51. Under The Sea Bath

52. Make Shaving Cream Worms – use shaving cream, colander and a large bowl to make shaving cream worms. Turn large bowl upside down, cover the top with shaving cream, press colander down on the shaving cream to let it squeeze through the holes of the colander.

53. Shaving Cream and Baby Doll Sensory Bin

54. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt Sensory Bin

55. PAW Patrol Play Dough Tray

56. Colour Mixing Tea Party

WILL YOU DO ANY OF THESE ACTIVITIES WITH YOUR 5 YEAR OLD? PIN IT FOR LATER!

What to do with a child at 5 years old at home. Simple games for development with a child of 5 years old

Holidays, weekends, colds and just evening leisure - you are so often alone with your child that it seems that all ideas for joint activities have been exhausted. Well, what else to do with a 5-year-old at home? To your attention - a selection of ideas that will help you have fun and usefully spend time together.

Idea 1

Create a daily schedule. In addition to working with a child at 5 years old, parents need to cope with other household chores. A huge benefit of being 5 years old is that now you can explain it. If your home vacation is going to be long, create a colorful schedule that includes hours for co-working, household chores, gadgets, and time for independent play. With the help of a felt-tip pen / stickers, the child will be able to control his day himself and he will not have to re-adapt to the regime after entering kindergarten.

When developing such a plan, consider age characteristics - it is difficult for your 5-year-old to concentrate on something for more than 30 minutes, especially if he is overactive.

Don't forget to stick to your own schedule! And you can buy ready-made bright templates in bookstores, stationery or toys.

Idea 2

Board games will allow you to relax, and your child will calm down after an active holiday or be distracted if he is sick and weak.

What board games can you use?

• Walkers with dice and tokens.
• Puzzles - for this age it is better to choose not very small pieces, within 30-60 pieces.
• Quest games.
• Table basketball, tennis, etc.

Idea 3

Water games. Children love these activities at 5 years old! You can realize an interesting plot not only while swimming, but also in an inflatable pool (if you live in a private house) or a small tank.

What can be done?

• Make a car wash or a pool for toys - paint them, then wash them.
• To catch fish with a line.
• Play with cars that change color in hot and cold water.
• Paint targets on the tiles in the bathroom, shoot them with a water pistol.

Many children love water and will come up with lots of ideas for games. If you are doing water experiments at home, find a place where there is no laminate flooring.

Idea 4

Educational platforms. Whether we like it or not, kids love gadgets. The use of educational platforms for preschoolers makes this type of leisure at least useful.

Choose a platform for children aged 5, register and complete developmental tasks together. You can find paid, free and shareware (limited access to free content) resources. It will be fun and educational for both of you!

Idea 5

Learning songs, poems, preparing gifts. Remember what family holidays are waiting for you ahead? Or maybe it's time to start giving them just like that?

Staying at home is a great opportunity to take care of preparing nice presents for loved ones. You can make stained-glass windows, crafts, blanks for which are easy to find in stores, learn songs, poems, record it on video and send it to those who are far away now. Relatives - it's nice, and the child - the development of communication skills!

Idea 6

Household games. Do you need to cook, wash, clean the house, and at this time the child toils and does not know what to do with himself?

The situation is solvable, and here are some ideas you can offer.

• Cooking together. Children are happy to cook from everything that is in the kitchen - “cook” porridge from raw oatmeal, soups with what is in the refrigerator. You can give the child flour, water, and under your guidance, he will make a small piece of dough. And you can give the task to color the pasta, from which you can then make beads.
• When doing laundry, you can also give your child a number of small tasks - put your clothes in the washing machine, rinse the T-shirt.
• When cleaning, tasks for a child may include dusting, cleaning toys. You can wash mirrors together, wipe the table.

If the baby asks you to play with him, you can find a compromise - voice the characters of his game, while doing your own thing.

Such games not only allow you to spend more time together, but also discipline the child.

What if you need to work remotely if the child is at home? Yes, here, the situation is more complicated, because it is impossible to take a child at the age of 5 for the whole day ...

Contact us, a professional agency for the selection of domestic staff Helper Agent. We will find a reliable nanny who professionally organizes children's leisure. We work in Moscow, Khimki and Kurkino. More than 3000 profiles of professional specialists with positive reviews and recommendations in the database. We can be trusted with the most valuable things. Just leave a request!

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27 ways to keep your child busy - Lifehacker

Some ways will help distract your child and win a few free hours, others are suitable for joint leisure and bring a lot of fun not only to children, but also to parents.

1. Have a sumo wrestling

Put a large T-shirt on your child and stuff soft pillows under it.

In this form, children can arrange sumo wrestling - collide with a running start and measure strength without risking anything to themselves. The wider the girth of the fighters, the safer the fight will be.

2. Try checkers with sweets

Use a ready-made game board or make your own. To do this, stick strips of colored sticky tape on a square base to make a field.

Instead of checkers, use two-color cookies, meringue or marshmallows. Any other sweets that are placed in the cage of the playing field and do not stain hands and clothes will do.

During the game, the opponent's checkers will be eaten in the literal and figurative sense.

3. Have a stain-free painting session

Take an A4-sized ziplock bag. Mix a small amount of shower gel with dye.

Pour the resulting mixture into a bag, close it and fix it on the table with adhesive tape. Invite your child to paint on an impromptu canvas with their fingers - the tinted gel will move inside, creating abstract patterns.

4. Try coloring sandwiches

For this homemade entertainment, you will need toast bread, milk and food coloring.

Pour a small amount of milk into separate containers and paint with different colors. Give your child a clean brush and invite them to turn the bread into a work of art.

When the picture is ready, put the pieces in the toaster for a while, bake the picture and enjoy a beautiful meal.

5. Arrange speed games

Almost any item in the house can be turned into a game inventory to do something at speed for one minute. Here are some ideas:

• Pick up candy or marshmallows with chopsticks.
• Build the tallest tower out of coins or plastic cups.
• Throw as many socks as you can into the laundry basket.
• Don't let the balloon fall to the floor.

6. Color the Rice

You will need rice, white vinegar, food coloring, and clean, heavy-duty plastic bags.

Dilute the pigments in a small amount of vinegar. Put a handful of rice in a bag, pour the paint into it, tie the polyethylene tightly and mix the grains to paint it well.

Children will love the process itself, when you can twist and squeeze the bag, and the result. The dyed rice needs to be dried, and then it can be used for pictures, applications and all kinds of crafts.

7. Build your own car wash

A toy car wash can be made with a 5 liter plastic canister, dish sponges and damp-proof adhesive tape.

Cut out the sink body from the tank with inlet and outlet. Cut dish sponges into thin, long sticks and glue them vertically to the sink ceiling.

Color the structure with permanent markers. Place shaving cream in empty yogurt jars. Take old toothbrushes and toy cars. And then just use your imagination.

8. Make a slime

Cooking the mass will take no more than 10 minutes. You will need 100 ml of PVA glue, dye and 1-2 teaspoons of sodium borate. The latter is also known as "borax" (you can buy it at a pharmacy).

Pour glue into a bowl, add a few drops of dye and mix. Then add some borax and keep stirring. As it thickens, add more sodium borate, a few drops at a time.

When the mass begins to peel off the sides of the bowl and stretch, knead it with your hands like dough. After a few minutes, the slime will become plastic and will no longer stick to surfaces.

Just do not play with the mass on the bedspread with villi: it clogs in them and is poorly cleaned. And if you use food pigment, the slime can slightly paint your hands.

9. Build a house for dolls out of boxes

You will need some time for this task, but then the children will play with such a house on their own, and for more than one day.

Prepare shoeboxes, tape, scrapbook paper or wallpaper, paints, stationery glue, newspapers to make the structure.

Insert the shoeboxes into each other at a 90° angle. Two pieces will make one corner of the house and one floor. Tape the boxes together.

Then cover the construction with newspapers. To hide the joints of the boxes and make them more like a house, you can use papier-mâché, a pre-prepared mixture of soaked paper and PVA glue. But if you want to make everything faster, skip this step.

Walls, ceilings and floors can be decorated with acrylic paints or gouache, pieces of wallpaper, fabric and even linoleum, beautiful paper. Arrange the furniture and the dollhouse is ready.

You can also make a small house from one box with partitions: arrange them crosswise - and you get two floors and four rooms.

10. Play outdoor games with paper tape

Use masking tape to mark the floor. Try the following games:

• Classics . As a cue ball, you can use a plastic cup or a candy jar.
• Outdoor shooting range . Make a target on the floor from several circles and launch a plastic ball in turn. The one with which the projectile rolls closer to the center wins.
• Tic-tac-toe . Glue four strips of paper tape, and draw shapes on cups or plastic balls and put them on the field.
• Long jump . Mark the start line and arrange a competition. Mark the results of each jump with a strip of tape.
• Rope Walkers . Stick the tape in long stripes and shapes, and then ask the children to walk along this "rope" without ever stepping to the side.

11. Make an airplane out of a cocktail straw

This is a non-standard airplane that will fly much further than usual. To make, you will need three pieces of paper and a plastic straw for a cocktail.

Cut out three strips measuring 2.5 x 12.5 cm. Connect two together and close in a large ring with adhesive tape. From the third strip, make a small ring.

Attach the pieces to the ends of the straw, positioning it inside them. Launch the model with a small ring forward.

12.

Take six to eight plastic tubes, cut them off and glue them together with tape. Of course, you can not expect a pleasant sound, but the children like it.

13. Put on a bubble show

Make a bubble solution: mix 3.5 liters of water, a glass of dish soap and a tablespoon of glycerin. For blowing, you can use purchased devices or make options more interesting from improvised means.

For example, if you fasten several large straws together, whole rainbow clusters will be blown out.

You can also make a jig for giant soap bubbles. Pass a long cord through two tubes and tie the ends with a knot.

After that, it remains to fix the wooden skewers, which you will hold on to, and you can test.

14. Show your child how to make soap clouds.

Cut off the bottom of a plastic bottle and put a sock over it. In a separate container, mix dishwashing liquid with a little water.

Dip the sock in soapy water and blow into the neck. You will get a large foam snake.

15. Make a shark or crocodile with a clothespin

Draw a shark or crocodile with big teeth on paper, cut the image in half and glue the two pieces to the clothespin. Children will be able to organize battles of toothy predators opening their mouths.

16. Play "Chapaev" with plastic caps

For this fun, you will need a glossy cardboard box and 8-12 plastic bottle caps.

Divide the "checkers" between two players and place them on the edges of the box at an equal distance from each other. You can color if you wish. Take turns blowing on the covers, trying to knock down the opponent's chips with them and at the same time not fly out of the field.

Small cars about 2 cm long can also be added. Place the mini toys in the middle of the field and blow on them to knock down the opponent's pieces.

The winner is the one who first gets rid of all the opponent's caps, but at the same time has at least one of his own on the field. Otherwise, a draw is declared.

17. Make an unusual slingshot

For this device you will need a plastic bottle and a ball. Anything can be used as cartridges, from coffee beans and rowan berries to soft bullets from toy guns.

Cut off the neck of the bottle. Tie the tail of the balloon in a knot. Cut off the wide part and pull the half with the tail over the neck. For strength, secure with a plastic ring from the bottle.

Put a bullet in the neck and pull the tail of the ball. You can arrange championships in firing range.

18. Show the children how to make their own stickers

Give the children a piece of sticky paper and have them draw little pictures. When ready, cut out the images and use as stickers.

19. Race noodles

If you have a noodle but don't want to swim, make a toy out of it.

Cut the product into halves along the entire length. You will get two tracks along which you can run glass or iron balls, toy cars.

Place the sticks with one end on a raised platform and the other end on the box where the objects will fall. Decorate the track with "Start" and "Finish" flags and arrange races.

20. Play aim shooting with glass balls

Take a shoe box and make several semi-circular cuts with different radii - a garage with a gate will come out. Determine how many points the child will receive for hitting each hole.

Put the box on the table upside down and try to roll the ball into the narrowest gate. The one with the most hits wins.

21. Make bracelets out of popsicle sticks

You will need water, a glass, wide wooden popsicle sticks and multi-colored paper tape or colored paper.

Place the sticks in boiling water for 30 minutes to soften. Then bend them one by one and insert them inside the glass. Dry the sticks in such a position that the wood takes the form of dishes.

Then decorate the bracelet to your liking. Use appliqués from colored paper or decorative tape, felt-tip pens, paints, pieces of lace - everything that is enough for imagination.

22. Show the children how to weave bracelets from colored cords

If your child already knows how to braid and knit interesting knots, buy several meters of colored cords. You can make a lot of simple bracelets out of them.

23. Do a science experiment with a balloon

Show your child a chemical experiment in the kitchen. To do this, pour a spoonful of soda into a balloon, and pour vinegar into an empty plastic bottle.

Place the ball on the neck of the bottle and fasten tightly. Gradually pour the soda out of it into the bottle. The neutralization reaction will result in the release of a large amount of carbon dioxide, which will inflate the balloon.

24. Make a frozen dinosaur egg

If your child loves dinosaurs, show him how ancient dinosaurs hatched from eggs. Put the figurine in a balloon and fill it with water, then send the balloon to the freezer. When the water freezes, call the young paleontologists.

Remove the rubber "shell" from the eggs, look at the dinosaur in the ice. You can get the toy with a small hammer.

25. Make banana ice cream

Take bananas (preferably slightly overripe), peel and cut into thin pieces. Put in the freezer.

After a couple of hours, remove the fruit and mix in a blender until the mass resembles thick sour cream. Dessert can be eaten immediately or put into molds and re-frozen. Older children can handle the cooking themselves.

26. Color the gingerbread cookies

For this culinary fun, you will need gingerbread cookies. You can buy it or bake it yourself. You also need egg white and powdered sugar icing, food coloring, and pastry bags.

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