30 Indoor School Holiday Activities Your Kids Will Love

Get your kids involved with indoor school holiday activities to look forward to. These are fun, educational and free to try, just as long as you have the chance to use a free and safe space at home. Here are 30 indoor school holiday activities that your kids will definitely love.

If your kids are not outdoorsy types, or if the weather is just too cold or rainy, they can still enjoy their school holidays inside!

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1. Make Some Friendship Bracelets

Friendship Bracelets have been around for decades, and are coming back into popularity with a vengeance. Pop down to your local craft shop to pick up bright colourful embroidery thread to make them at home.

It’s great for kids’ fine motor skills, and takes them ages so it’s going to keep them occupied for days!

Follow this easy tutorial on how to make them from Honestly WTF

2. Cardboard maze

3. Build a ‘Structure’ with 100 Cups

You can buy these cups from most supermarkets or party suppliers now – grab 100 of them and give the pile to each child to see what they can make!  Best of all, you can use them again and again.

4. Indoor camping

The kids were really excited when they got home from school today. When we left for school today, I told them we would come home and do something that they had not done yet. I suggested we go to a different type of indoor camping. I looked on Pinterest for some ideas and started sketching out what we wanted to do. After looking at the different pictures of indoor tents that we had on Pinterest, I decided we were going to go to a treehouse theme.

5. Lego board game

Play a Lego board game with a friend or a family member — you won’t even need a table. There are indoor activities to do when the weather is too cold. It’s the most basic indoor game around, but it’s great fun for children!

6. Cotton ball painting

You don’t have to make beautiful pictures like a professional artist. All you need is some cotton balls and paint. That’s it! Kids will enjoy doing it because they will get to create an intricate picture. This activity will teach them how colours interact with each other and how to paint with non-paintable materials.

All you need is a cotton ball and paint. In order for them to be able to create beautiful, delicate shapes with paint, you need to go a little slow. And when you finish, you’ll probably have some sticky paint all over yourself. Happy art-making!

7. Toilet roll French knitting 

You could cover Christmas stockings, card holders, or just about anything else you could possibly think of.

• Use household toilet roll
• Drop 1 twist of yarn down, and pull up the yarn. Wrap around a toilet roll tube and twist up the wool, starting at one end. Then continue to wrap and twist each roll-up. Cover the skein with a rubber band.
• Fold in all the ends of the wool and tie the ends in place with a plastic baggie, or another strong piece of string. Stash the baggie somewhere safe.
• To use the yarn, pull up the wrap, twist and then pull the yarn down, knotting at each twist.

8. Indoor slide

9. No-mess finger painting

There’s no need to scrub out messy finger paints. Simply wash your hands in warm water, squeeze out any excess finger paint, rinse, and pat dry. Here’s how to do it:

10. DIY tap shoes

11. Fairy jar

12. Building with marshmallows and toothpicks

13. Balloon-soda experiment

14. Vegetable experiment

15. Make a rainbow rice

16. Make Rainbow slime

17. Carnation experiment

18. Making homemade butter

19. Cookie decorating

20. Rainy day activities jar

Do you find yourself dreaming of a glorious vacation, wanting to recreate the picture of a charming night spent in a rustic inn with fairy lights strung out on the pillars? Don’t despair: there are many family-friendly indoor activities that will leave you with happy memories! Take some time to enjoy the sights and sounds around you and decide on a few fun, easy indoor activities which you could do.

21. Growing sweet potatoes

22. Cups and ping pongs

23. Tabletop soccer

24. Indoor bowling

25. Balloon tennis

26. Pool noodle “ball” pit

27. Indoor race track

28. Make Some Fruit Pops or Ice Popsicles

29. Recreate Mission Impossible

30. Have a Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger Hunts are fun for kids of all ages – and we have different Scavenger Hunts for different ages.

The Lego Colour Hunt:

Allocate each child one Lego colour.  Grab 10 pieces of Lego in that colour, and hide it in one room.  Each child has to go and find all 10 pieces of ‘their colour’ – the person that collects all of their 10 pieces first – is the winner!

The Wooden Puzzle Hunt:

This works much like the Lego Colour Hunt – but instead with all the pieces of a kids wooden puzzle.  As your child finds the puzzle pieces, they need to fit them back into the jigsaw puzzle.

Which of these indoor school holiday activities do you want your kids to play first?