25+ Indoor Activities for Kids at Home

Two children making their way through an indoor obstacle course of rainbow blocks, road pieces, wooden planks, rings and a balance board in a bright playroom.

25+ Indoor Activities for Kids: Easy Play Ideas for Rainy Days at Home

The best indoor activities for kids are simple, open-ended and easy to set up: art and craft, imaginative play, building, hands-on learning and active games that burn off energy. Whether it's a rainy week, a sick day or the long stretch of school holidays, keeping children happily busy at home doesn't need to be complicated.

Here are our favourite ways to keep children happily playing at home. Every activity can be adapted for toddlers, preschoolers and older children.

Start with toy rotations and busy boxes

Packing some toys away for a few weeks lets children rediscover them as if they were new. Rotations work brilliantly for little ones; older children know their toys well, so a surprise busy box or craft box with a few fresh items can lift the mood. A little boredom is healthy too, because it teaches children to entertain themselves. Below you'll find what to put in those boxes, how to play with each item and why it's good for development.

What to put in a busy box:

Mader spinning tops for quick challenges and turn-taking
A Grimm's magnet puzzle, which comes in its own tin box
Art and craft supplies such as crayons, coloured paper and stickers
STOCKMAR Modelling Beeswax for little sculptures
A playsilk or two for dress-ups, dancing and pretend play
A KAPLA Challenge Box, with 16 planks and 12 challenge cards
Small wooden dolls and animal figures for small world stories
A box of Billes & Co marbles for marble games or ball runs (for older children, as marbles are a choking hazard)
A new book or two for quiet moments

What art & craft activities can kids do at home?

Art and craft is the easiest way to keep children absorbed for a long stretch, because it uses both hands and brain. Children practise fine motor skills while using imagination, creativity and forward planning, and bigger projects add composing, preparing and seeing an idea through.

Our Art & Craft collection has everything for a fun session: crayons, watercolours, brushes, coloured paper and card, stickers, glue, scissors, pom-poms, clay and modelling beeswax.

Craft ideas to try at home:

Copy a famous painting or a favourite picture book illustration with STOCKMAR watercolours.
Make magic scratch-art sheets or wax-resist pictures with STOCKMAR crayons and watercolours.
Model miniature food for animal figurines, or decorate candles, with STOCKMAR Modelling Beeswax (find more in Candle Decorating).
Sculpt freely with DAS Modelling Clay, an air-dry clay with no kiln needed.
Draw a window mural with washable Kitpas Crayons.
Fold window stars from origami folding paper or translucent waxed kite paper. Our free step-by-step guides start simple and build up to the traditional Waldorf window star: Kite Paper Window Designs Part 1 and Part 2.
Turn a drawing into a painting with LYRA Rembrandt Aquarelle watercolour pencils: colour in, then brush over with water.
Grab a ready-to-make craft kit from URSUS, such as a window art kit. Everything is in the box, so they're ideal for a no-prep afternoon (browse more in Art, Craft & Creative Kits).

📷 @mumz.world (1-3), @learnandbloom

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Children’s art and craft at home: painting a watercolour crocodile, drawing a rainbow on a window with Kitpas crayons, decorating beeswax candles, and colourful wax-resist heart paintings.

Playsilk activities indoors: a girl twirling in a silk cape, a small world river scene with wooden boats and animals, a colour hunt on six playsilks, and a child building inside a silk cubby.

How can kids play with playsilks?

Playsilks are one of the most versatile open-ended toys you can own, because a single square of silk can become a cape, a river, a cubby or a pair of wings. Children reach for them every day, indoors and out. Dancing is a favourite: the silk floats through the air and children feel like they can fly, which usually turns into a game of fairies, birds or butterflies.

You'll find the full range of Sarah's Silks Playsilks in different sizes and colours at Oskar's Wooden Ark.

More ways to play with playsilks:

Colour hunt: spread Playsilks on the floor and ask children to find toys that match each colour.
Dress-ups: tie silks into wings, capes, bonnets, dresses or skirts, or drape one over your head to become a ghost. Role play is full of learning opportunities.
Small world and dramatic play: use solid-colour Playsilks or the multi-coloured Earth Playsilks as sand, water, grass, mud, ice, snow, fire or lava.
Cubbies and forts: drape a few standard silks over chairs, or use Sarah's Silks Giant Playsilks for a bigger build.

New to playsilks? Our guide What Are Playsilks? A Complete Guide to Sarah's Silks covers sizes and care.

📷 @sarahssilks, @playroomstories (2,3), @exploringlifetogether_

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How can kids build and stack at home?

Stacking and building with open-ended wooden toys suits every age, because each child builds at their own skill level. It strengthens fine motor skills, imagination and creativity, plus STEM skills such as spatial awareness, construction, problem solving and planning.

Browse our range of building blocks and construction toys and stacking and sorting toys.

Building ideas for kids alone or the whole family:

Give your Grimm's Rainbow a workout by recreating fun stacks. Find inspiration in our Grimm's Rainbow Play Ideas guide.
Build with KAPLA planks: KAPLA gives hours of fun and endless possibilities, and every builder can work at their own level.
Create castles, towers and flatlays with Grimm's Wooden Toys building sets, or simply leave children to free play and see what they invent.
Make a ball run from Grimm's pieces. Our step-by-step guide 5 Simple Grimm's Ball Runs You Can Build Today is the easiest place to start. Or combine them with a CUBORO marble run, and find more ideas in our Ultimate Marble Run Play Guide.
Create small worlds: a favourite for role play and communication. Combine wooden animals and figurines, trees and playsilks (see our Small World Play collection). Or build a mini town: lay out roads from Waytoplay or MyRoads, add buildings made from blocks, then fill the streets with wooden figures and vehicles (see Roads, Vehicles & Town Play).

📷 @playroomstories (1,2), @woodentoyplay, @learnandbloom

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Building and stacking play: a Grimm’s Rainbow stacked in a wave, a rainbow castle of wooden blocks and peg dolls, a girl building a tall KAPLA tower, and children playing with a road track and rainbow arches.

Learning through play: a boy watching a rainbow spinning top, a boy digging in the garden with a child’s spade, two children sharing a wooden play food picnic, and children sorting pom-poms on a wooden From Jennifer board.

How can kids learn through play at home?

Learning slots naturally into play: colour and shape sorting, numbers and literacy, STEM concepts and gross and fine motor skills. Most of the time children don't even notice they're learning. If you're crafty, make DIY toys alone or with your children and combine them with toys and bits and pieces you already have.

Explore our full range of Play and Learn resources.

Ideas for making learning fun:

Spinning top challenge: time how long each Mader spinning top spins and write down the results. It covers timing, writing, turn-taking and fine motor skills.
Gardening: teach children to care for plants with Gluckskafer gardening tools (more in Garden & Outdoors).
Healthy eating play: recreate real breakfasts, lunches and dinners with Erzi play food, write your own menu cards and practise chopping with cuttable velcro play food.
Everyday concepts: talk about colours, shapes, weather, planets, time and your daily routine, or practise numbers and letters with tracing boards. From Jennifer makes beautiful wooden learning resources (see also Literacy & Language and Patterns & Maths).
DIY toys: make posting boxes or learning boards and use them with loose parts. Don't throw out your delivery box: our Box Ideas page shows how to turn it into something new.

📷 @exploringlifetogether_, Gluckskafer Toys, @playroomstories, @woodentoyplay

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How can kids burn energy indoors?

Children have an innate need to move and test what their bodies can do, and learning to judge risk is an essential skill too. It's harder to give them space to move when you're stuck inside, but a few simple setups go a long way.

Find more ideas in our Move and Creative Movement collections.

Indoor games to get kids moving:

Silk ball games: scrunch playsilks into soft balls for throwing and juggling.
Masking-tape hopscotch: mark out a hopscotch grid on the floor.
Bottle bowling: set up a bowling alley with old water bottles part-filled with water as pins.
Obstacle course: combine a Wobbel Board, playsilks, Grimm's building boards and Stapelstein stepping stones.
Stepping stone games: lay out Stapelstein stones for "the floor is lava", hop only on a called colour, or build a balance trail that gets trickier each round. Afterwards, stack them into towers or use them as seats for a cosy reading corner. For fresh ideas, the Stapelstein Game Ideas cards mix active and quiet games, and the nesting Stapelstein Inside set adds small world and pretend play.
Kids' yoga: follow a children's yoga video on YouTube, or try Wobbel yoga, using a Wobbel Board as a step or a rocking base for poses. It's also a lovely way to calm down before naps or meals.

📷 Stapelstein, @playroomstories(2,3), @mumz.world

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Active indoor play: a boy jumping across Stapelstein stepping stones, a toddler on a ring and plank obstacle course, a mother and child dancing with playsilks, and a girl in a yoga pose on a Wobbel Board.

Keep play simple, open-ended and fun

The most successful indoor days mix a little of everything: something creative, something imaginative, something to build, something to learn and something to get the wiggles out. Rotate a few toys, pack a surprise busy box and let children lead, and a day stuck inside can become one of their favourites.

We hope these ideas inspire your next rainy day. Share your own favourite indoor play ideas in the comments below so we can all learn from each other.

For more play and learn inspiration, explore the Oskar's Wooden Ark blog or follow us on Instagram.