Activities and Ideas for Children

(and adults who like childish stuff)

Outdoors:

• Capture the Flag
• Grounders
• Fishes and Whales
• Frozen tag
• Wrestling
• Sliding on sleds
• Take pictures of spots in the woods. Children search the woods to try to find the spots in the pictures.
• Frozen tag
• Hot Dog Tag
• Hockey
• Soccer
• Yoga
• Pac Man Tag
• Hide and Seek

Activities:

• Dickie birds rhyme / magic trick (with tape on your fingers)
• Animal Charades
• Cooking
• Puzzles
• Telling Stories
• Act out a drama of a story (e.g. the Three Little Pigs

Building and Art:

(Some ideas from "Children's Art & Crafts Australian Women's Weekly", which my mom has on her bookshelf)

• Blocks
• Play Doh
• Making musical instruments from paper plates and beads
• Making guitars from kleenex boxes and elastics
• Finger painting
• Painting with ice
• Building skeleton out of bones (made of cardboard?) and tying the pieces together with string
• Bubble Art
• Building musical instruments and then playing them
• Painting without brushes
• Painting with eyes closed
• Fingerprint drawings: make your fingerprint and then draw something around it so the fingerprint becomes part of the picture.
• Making drawings out of your name or out of words
• Leaf rubbings
• String painting
• Trace your body and then paint it
• Blot painting - fold paper in half, paint on it, fold it in half to make the paint create a mirror image
• Marble painting - get paint on marbles and roll them around on paper
• Paper dyeing - get absorbant paper, fold it up, dip it in paint, unfold it to dry
• Mural painting (outside on the wall)
• Branch weaving (weaving with branches being the outside border)
• Sewing cards: cut out a shape, hole punch the outside border, and have kids thread yarn into and out of the holes
• Sponge printing (dip sponge in paint and press it on paper
• Nature collage (glue pieces of nature to poster / paper)
• Finger puppers
• Sock puppets
• Boats
• Papier mache
• Paper fans
• Box puzzle (make your own puzzle)
• Rock painting
• Xylophone with bottles of water (each with a different amount of water). Add food coloring to make it colorful.

Science:

• Water (different amounts in glasses, food coloured)
• Beaver dam
• Bubbles that don't pop
• Microscope
• Solar system model
• Star Chart app on phone (augmented reality to look at the stars based on where you point the phone)
• Making flubber
• Making OObleck

Books:

• "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint Exupery
• "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis
• "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman
• "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" by J.K. Rowling
• "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling
• "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling
• "Alice in Wonderland" by Louis Carroll
• "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" by Dr. Suess
• "Harold's Fairy Tale" by Crockett Johnson
• "Imagine a World" by Rob Gonsalves
• "Mama, do you love me" by Barbara Joosse
• "Everybody needs a rock" by Byrd Baylor
• "Mouse Soup" by Arnold Lobel
• "Owl and Other Scrambles" by Lisl Weil
• "The Owl and the Pussycat and other Nonsense" Illustrated by Owen Wood
• "Don't Let the Pidgin Drive the Bus!" by Mo Willems
• "Songbirds of Eastern Canada Paintings" by Kathryn DeVos Miller, Text by Trudy L. Rising
• "Are you my Mother?" by P.D. Eastman
• "Duck! Rabbit!" by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld
• "The Lion and the Mouse" by Jerry Pinkney
• "The Red Book" by Barbara Lehman
• "Time Flies" by Eric Rohmann
• "Robot Dreams" by Sara Varon
• "There's a Mouse in my House" by Sheree Fitch
• "Toes in my Noes and other poems" by Sheree Fitch
• "Uno's Garden" by Graeme Base
• "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" by Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault, illustrated by Lois Ehlert
• "The Gruffalo" by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler
• "Olivia" by Ian Falconer

Movies:

• The Croods
• Frozen
• My Neighbor Totoro
• The Secret World of Arietty
• The Lorax
• Fern Gully

TV shows:

• Teddy Ruxpin
• Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers

Board Games:

• Bounce-off
• Sorry!
• Pokemon Trading Card Game
• Crossbows and Catapults
• Clue
• Spy Alley
• Mousetrap
• Go Fish
• Pictionary
• Crokinole
• Don't Spill the Beans
• Bausack
• Mouse Trap
• Memory
• Fives
• Barrel of Monkeys
• Connect 4

Toys:

• Capsella
• Blocks
• Music Keyboard
• Table Hockey

Songs:

(Many song lyrics are here)

• Baa Baa Black Sheep
• Baby Beluga
• Ants go Marching
• Do Your Ears Hang Low
• Farmer in the Dell
• Going on a Lion Hunt
• Grandfather's Clock
• Hole in the bottom of the sea
• If You're Happy and You Know It
• Itsy Bitsy Spider
• Jingle Bells
• John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt
• Mary Had a Little Lamb
• My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean
• On Top of Spaghetti
• Open Up Your Heart and Let the Sun Shine in
• Puff the Magic Dragon
• She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain
• There's a Hole in the Bucket
• You Are My Sunshine

Educational Video Games:

• Scrap Mechanic

Camps:

• Redtail Nature Awareness Camp: here and here
• Worlds UNBound at UNB