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There are so many great creative activities for kids at home! And it’s one of my kids favorite things to do! They would seriously spend all day creating and making if I let them!
They absolutely love when we have General Conference for our church! Because I let them spend the day with creative activities that are awesome, and most of them are things they get to make! Teaching kids to be creative is so important and will translate over to their problem solving skills as an adult!
Here are our favorite creative activities for kids at home that we absolutely love that help to foster their creativity!
Beados
I know that they market these mostly to girls. But my 4 year old son absolutely loves these! He begs to play with them, and they keep him entertained for hours!
I have yet to find just the layout trays that you can purchase separately, so you have to buy a set to get those. But then I just buy a huge bulk set of the beado balls like this one.
The kids have plenty to play with and can create whatever they want.
The sets come with different pictures you can copy. But my kids actually prefer to make their own creations and formations! We also have the beado pen that makes it a little easier if they haven’t mastered fine motor skills!
After they’re done creating you just spritz it with water and they dry pretty fast. (Assuming your kids don’t dump the whole water bottle.)
Then they play with their beado creations, and start all over again!
Large Drawing Pads
I actually have a really hard time finding big drawing pads! When I do, they’re usually around the poster boards! This one is a pretty decent size, but we have found some that are larger!
But the bigger the more fun! We have had some that are as big as a poster board. So when you open them up it is like 2 poster boards side by side.
Most of the time they have lines in them to practice handwriting. But I love that they are just huge blank pieces of paper!
I rarely buy my kids coloring books to color in. Instead I give them blank paper and let them draw and color whatever they can create.
So the LOVE when I find these large pads of paper and spend countless hours drawing and coloring! Usually they put them on the floor and sit and color on their bellies!
I also really love these when my kids are toddlers, there’s plenty of room to practice coloring without getting it all over the table!
Letting kids use their imagination to create what they want to draw fosters so much more creativity than a coloring book. And when it’s done on a large scale it adds such a fun element to coloring!
Kinetic Sand
If you have never played with this stuff before you may be a nay-sayer. Cause who wants the mess of sand in your house? I totally get it.
Until I actually played with it! It really sticks to itself and hardly makes a mess!
Kinetic sand is soft and moldable, and we have had ours for over a year and it is still wet and fun to play with!
It comes in multiple colors and with a few little castles to build with.
My kids love to create little cities and villages and then smash them. Or see how high they can stack the sand and make volcanoes.
On top of being a great way for them to create, it is also a really fun sensory activity!
Seriously, try it out, you’ll be gladly playing alongside with your kids!
Legos or Building Blocks
When I need my kids to really keep themselves entertained for a while I pull out the legos or the blocks.
They rarely follow the instructions that came with the legos but prefer to create their own things. In fact I prefer to buy the sets that are just random legos than things they have to follow instructions to build!
We have all three sizes of the legos. I use the megablocks for my toddler, and she loves to just figure out how to stack the pieces on one another. It’s a great fine motor skill and she feels so accomplished when she gets it.
We have the duplos that I am comfortable letting all the kids play with as well. They aren’t too small, but my son doesn’t feel like he’s playing with baby toys like when he plays with the megablocks!
And we have the regular small legos. Fortunately my toddler doesn’t put stuff in her mouth! But the kids love to create with all three sizes!
We also have the Kids K’nex sets that are a pretty unknown secret. But they are awesome! My son probably plays with these more than anything else! We have a super old set that combines with the duplos, but you can’t find them anymore! We have purchased a couple of the new sets and he loves to build cars and stick figures and whatever he can imagine!
And finally we have just simple colored building blocks. The kids love to build and knock over towers, create jumps for cars, use them as part of their games!
I love to see what my kids create with the legos and blocks, and how they use them to play! Not only do they get to use their creativity to create the lego pieces, but then to figure out how to have their creations interact!
Finger Paint
Make sure you are prepared with a paint smock and ready for some serious cleanup, because this gets messy. And fast! So make sure you buy a washable finger paint like this one! We have never had anything staining, or any problems with it!
Finger painting has always been something my kids love. I think they like the sensory aspect of finger painting, as well as the actually painting part.
It’s a great way to get them to experiment with colors and how you create certain colors.
They always like to see what color they make when they mix it all together when they’re finished.
Finger painting is something that you can do with toddlers and up to older children, and they love it!
I think they love it in part because it is so messy!?
But it’s a great way to let them be creative in what they create using just their hands!
And the added sensory aspect is definitely a bonus as well!
ZigZag Scissors
I remember playing with my moms ZigZag Scissors as a kid! And my kids love when they get the chance to play with mine!
For my 4 year old it’s great practice using scissors without worrying about him hurting himself.
While they cut paper well, they seem to be pretty safe when it comes to cutting other things, like fingers!
We have never had an accident with them and it’s so fun to see how much the kids love them.
They love to cut out different shapes and use glue or glitter glue to make different pictures and creations.
If you have never used them before, they are fun even as a grow up!
It’s fun to watch them create different things based on the shape of the scissors.
Waves easily become the ocean. ZigZags mountains, and curvy ones make beautiful flowers!
Seriously a package of zigzag scissors and a package of construction paper, and you’ll have one entertained and happy kid!
Beading
Not only is beading great for fine motor skills, but it helps to foster creativity in kids. And is one of our favorite creative activities!
As they put together the beads to create, patterns, themes, or random mixes it’s fun to watch them create something they thing is beautiful.
We have a random assortment of beads. Large Pony beads are great to string onto shoelaces! The part at the end is firm and easy to get the beads on, and for 3-4 year olds they love to see how many they have strung onto the shoelace!
We have filled up the same shoelaces countless times with Pony beads, and when they’re finished they love to take the beads off as much as the enjoyed putting them on!
We discovered these awesome snap beads just last year. But they are SO fun to play with. My husband and I even sit down with the kids and do them.
The best part is, there’s no string! And they’re so easy you can make something, and then take it apart and create something else!
If you haven’t tried these yet, I highly recommend them!
For my daughter who is learning to spell and getting better at reading she loves the letter beads. She makes necklaces for her friends with their names, or just with words she likes that day!
There are seriously so many different kinds of beads! And I have yet to discover a kind that my kids don’t love!
Whether they are just stringing them for the sake of stringing them, or actually creating necklaces or bracelets, your kids will love beading!
Spirograph
This is another activity I remember loving as a kid, the spirograph! No matter how hard I tried, I could never create the same pattern twice!
It was so fun to see what shape the different pieces would create. And to pull off the final product that always looked way cool!
We have the Lakeshore Spirograph and I love that it comes in a handy little carrying case that house all of the pieces so they don’t get lost! It also has a ton of different shapes and pieces to create with.
And as a bonus it includes a pen with a few different colors, which is always fun for kids!
This is one of the things my kids frequently argue over who gets to use because they love it so much.
We have bought a super cheap set before, and it just didn’t work super great. The pieces would get stuck and it was pretty frustrating for my kids.
So if you’re wanting to get one, I would recommend spending a little more and buying one that is quality!
Well that’s it! Those are our favorite creative activities for kids at home around here!
My kids have a pretty natural creativity to them and so they really love to be creating things!
But I have noticed in kids who come over who aren’t that way that they really enjoy all of these activities!
Try them out and give me a shout out which ones you liked best!
1 Comment
I absolutely love the Spirograph, they have certainly come a long way with these since I played with them. Also, the Legos, they were a sure thing with my kids, we had all shapes and sizes. I just love reading your blog, it is very helpful!