Overview

[En español]

From rainy days to days home from school – there are many ways to use your imagination with common household items for a little physical activity, creativity, and fun! Discover ways to turn common objects around the house into active fun and games as a family!

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Many of the items on hand and at home can be be transformed into simple physical activity equipment or give children a a creative outlet to play and explore. Try some of these ideas below or explore ways of using other items at your disposable!

Physical Activity

• DIY Weights: Don’t have weights to strength train? Use a full milk jug or laundry detergent bottle. Canned goods can be used for little ones.
• Agility Ladder: Make your own agility ladder by creating a ladder on the floor using tape or creating ladder “rungs” using items such as paper towel roles, rolled up towels or yarn.
• Balance Beam: Use masking tape or painters’ tape to make “balance beams” on the floor. Straight, zig-zagged or curvy – practice walking the beam like an Olympic athlete and for an added challenge, try walking on your tip toes!
• Dress-up Relay: Pick a few items from your closet – pants, shirt, hat, shoes, etc. – and set up a relay race where kids (or adults!) have to run from one side of the room to the other, put on the dress-up clothes on top of their regular clothes, the run back to the starting line.
• Physical Activity Bingo: Create a Bingo game with simple physical activities such as push-ups, jumping jacks, squats, sit ups, yoga poses and play using pennies or other coins. When someone has “Bingo”, have everyone do a circuit workout with the activities highlighted!

Creative Play

• Homemade Paint: Combine flour, water and a little food coloring (to make a thin paste) to make your own homemade paints. Paint on anything you have – boxes, junk mail or paper bags – with items such as old toothbrushes, spoons or fingers.
• Salt Dough: Salt dough is easy to make and can be used for making crafts, figurines, ornaments, earrings, etc. Combine 1 c. salt with 2 c. flour and add water until it becomes a dough (~3/4 c.). Bonus: Kneading the dough is like squeezing a stress ball – release that tension!
• Boxes: Imagine the possibilities – A car, a house, a mailbox, a knee pad for gardening, or an art canvas. Think outside the box!
• “Good Junk” Box: Start a box with “good junk” and include materials such as empty paper towel and toilet paper rolls, bottles/containers, paper scraps, newspaper, buttons, straws, etc. Use it for arts and crafts and other projects.
• Toilet Paper Bowling: Aim for a strike with toilet paper bowling. Stack toilet paper rolls into a pyramid and use a soup can or a ball for an easy (and quiet) game of bowling! Stack the rolls in different shapes or at different heights to shake up the game.
• Ring Toss: Glue an empty paper towel roll to the center of a paper plate. Grab a handful of paper plates and cut out the middle to make a ring. Take turns tossing and see how many you can land! You can also turn it into arts and craft exercise and decorate the rings with crayons, paint, or markers.

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