How I Create Play Activities For FREE!

Hey friends! I know times are wild and I wanted to provide you with a few practical tips on how to create play activities for your children for free! I know I’m not the only one who has trouble creating fun things for my kids to do to pass the time I hope this blog post is helpful!

The best way to keep things cost effective when it comes to play activities is to use things that you already own! Most of us have books in our home for our kids and I suggest you start there. Let's use my theme that I’m building for my boys as the example in this blog. We’re diving into all things farm related and I rounded up a few books to focus on. If you have multiple books on one subject, just pick a few to focus on. No need to overwhelm yourself! What are some common themes I can find from these titles? Animals and their sounds, the things we do on a farm, food that comes from a farm... here are just a few examples that I picked up from reading these stories.

Next, how can I best represent these themes with things I can find around the house? Do you have any physical represensations of farm animals like stuffed toys? Use those! If not, do you have pictures of farm animals you can print? It’s easy to make some homemade picture cards from printed photos backed with cardboard or a plain file folder. If not just use the pictures in your books! All of those items are easy to find around the the house! So one activity you can do is use your stuffed toys or picture cards and review each animal and their sounds!

Next theme I wanted to explore are the things farmers do... they tend for the animals, they maybe build or harvest food... One activity can be exploring the process of how milk comes from cows. I have a latex glove and milk (if no milk use rice water)! You can poke a few small holes in the glove and that can be a pretend cow utter kids can squeeze to get milk out- extra points if you have a bucket! For babies you can focus on teaching them the baby sign for milk or even have them do some sensory play in milk. Milk baths for babies are a thing!

Another activity you can do is use shredded cheddar cheese and build haystacks just like real farmers do! I love using food to teach, it’s just as effective as any other material you may use. Food play is also free if you have a bit to spare in your fridge or pantry! Another activity is washing apples, apples come from farms (fruit farms!) and washing apples is something that farmers do during harvest season. Incorporate practical life and home items into your activities. Kids are not only fascinated but find home objects SO FUN! Give them a few apples and a scrubber with water- if you don’t have one they can use their hands or a small washcloth.

The last theme is food that comes from a farm... This one has so many options! You can make a paper veggie garden simply with crayons and construction paper, You can explore different seeds from fruit, bake an apple pie or create a fun farmers market pretend play set up with a few signs to attract your customers, pictures of fruit and veggies glued to a paper plate or styrofoam bowls and set up on a table. Flowers from the yard to sell and sweet tea to pour! Your toddler just need the prompting and trust me they’ll take it from there! Also dont underestimate the power of songs and movement games! Any basic game for kids can be adapted easily to the theme you need- you can play “Farmer Says” which is basically “Simon Says” or do Farm Animal yoga and make up funny animal poses. Find YouTube videos that explore deeper into your theme and real life examples of what theme you have. For this theme I would look for videos of real farmers caring for animals or showing a tour of their farm. Do you know anyone who is a farmer? Or someone who owns sheep, horses or other livestock? Have an interview with them and come up with questions your kiddos can ask to learn more!

I hope this inspires you to go and play today! You don’t need all the things to have fun, just the willingness to teach and a bit of creativity!