15 Favorite Creative Activities for Kids

Creative activities are great for kids in many ways. They keep them entertained for quite a long time, spark their curiosity and cognitive development, and help them adapt to school subjects easier.

To help you spend quality time with your kid and encourage their learning abilities, in this blog we’ve compiled all the fun crafts and creative activities for kids. From fun outdoor craft activities to indoor creative art exercises, through this blog, you will discover the best creative daily activities for kids. Let’s get started!

The Most Entertaining Creative Indoor Activities for Kids

Kids need to spend part of their daily free time occupied with fun and creative indoor activities. Here are the most enjoyable creative thinking activities and fun things to do with kids:

1. Finger Puppets

Kids love playing story-telling-based activities and spending time imagining magical stories. So finger puppets are your partner in crime for encouraging your child to think more creatively and helping them expand their imagination.

To create a unique puppet show with your kids, you need felt, scissors, glue, markers, and puppet templates. Then, kids can create and decorate their puppets and play with them. You can also integrate the puppet show into your kid’s favorite stories or even help them shoot a puppet TV show.

2. MentalUP

Choosing technology-based creative thinking activities for kids is a great way to use technology in a beneficial way for kids. As a scientifically designed learning app, MentalUP offers the best online creative activities for kids of all ages.

The app includes 150+ games and activities specially designed to improve your kid's cognitive skills like imagination, creative thinking, problem solving, logical thinking, memory, and attention. 🚀

3. Spider Web Search

Spider web is one of the most challenging and beneficial creativity activities for kids. The game enhances kids' motor skills, enables them to practice problem-solving skills, and improves their creative thinking skills.

So if you are looking for creative fall activities for kids to play when the weather gets cold, this is the one for you. Make a prize bag for each kid and tie a piece of different colored string to each bag.

Then, wrap the ends of the strings over or around objects in the room. Weave each string across other strings to entwine them and create your web so that kids can unravel the web and reach their prizes.

4. Bath Paint

If you are googling for “creative activities easy for kids,” look no further. This bath paint activity is a simple yet fun activity to spark kids' imagination, color recognition, and fine motor skills.

All you need is some shaving cream, a muffin tin, and some neon coloring that doesn't stain. Your kids will enjoy creating a variety of colors by mixing shaving cream with colors and creating a masterpiece in the bath.

Let your kids use their imagination and make a mess to keep them entertained with this artistic sensory experience. Plus, you can take a photo of the final creation each time after the activity to see your kids' artistic progress. You can always benefit from this alternative as one of the best rainy day activities for kids.

5. Trivia Game

As trivia games require kids to keep thinking in spite of obstacles, they are great creative perserverance activities for kids. Additionally, they exercise kids' minds to retain information and use their reasoning skills.

You can create trivia sticks and trivia cards or simply use Disney trivia questions to play with your kid anytime and anywhere. By choosing topics from a variety of subjects according to your kid’s interests, you can ask them some questions to challenge their mind to think more creatively and use their logic skills.

6. Finish the Story

This one is one of the most beneficial creative writing activities for kids. The activity can be played both at home or in the classroom and sparks kids' creative thinking, literacy, problem-solving, and analysis skills.

Just discuss some topics with your kids, like animals, weather conditions, or whatever they are interested in, and write some sentences about that topic. Then, your kids can continue writing to create a short novel about the designated topic. You can always include writing prompts for kids in the activity and make it more fun.

7. Egg Decorating

Clearly, egg decorating is one of the most creative Easter activities for kids, and it is also great for encouraging kids' color recognition, creativity, and artistic skills. You can use this one as one of the most effective after-school activities for kids and support your kids’ academic success at home.

All you need is some paint, brushes, crayons, tape, and some boiled eggs to keep kids safe from bacteria in raw eggs. Then, your kids can start decorating as they wish by drawing flowers, dots, shapes and etc., on those eggs.

To spice things up and challenge your kid a bit further, you can set a specific time for them to finish decorating their eggs.

8. Marbled Paper

If you are looking for rainbow-themed creative activities for kids to ignite their sensory development, this marbled paper activity which can also be used as one of the best extracurricular activities for kids, is a great idea.

The process of making marbled papers is easy yet open to exploration. Fill a tub with shaving cream to enable kids to add paint on the top and swirl it with a stick.

Then, they can lay a piece of paper on top and create a unique marbled paper. When the papers are dry, you can organize a gift card decoration activity with them to make it even more fun.

9. Shaving Cream Play Dough

This is one of the most fun creative activities for kids to encourage social and emotional development, as it is great for playdates and gatherings.

To prepare this fun, creative activity, all you need is food coloring in desired colors, one cup of shaving cream, and two cups of cornstarch. Then, kids can knead all the ingredients together and play with them.

This process will provide a great sensory learning experience for your kids, improve their fine motor skills, and make group activities more enjoyable.

The Best Exciting Creative Outdoor Activities for Kids

So far, we have discovered all the fun, creative indoor activities for kids. Still, all kids need to spend some time outdoors when the weather is nice to stay active and enjoy the fresh air. So now, let’s deep dive into the most exciting creative outdoor activities for kids.

1. Color Scavenger Hunt

This is a great activity to give kids a small exercise, support their creativity, and ignite their color recognition and naturalistic skills.

You can walk into your garden or organize a family nature trip and encourage the kids to find matching items with the colors of nature, like green, brown, and black. Kids will need to find creative ways to look for these items and enjoy using these items in their decoration activities.

2. Sports Games

Exercising with sports games improves divergent and convergent thinking, which are the two main components of creative thinking. Therefore, kids need to spend time both outdoors and indoors with some sports games to improve their mental and physical abilities.

If you are looking for a safe and trustable source providing your kids with fun activities and exercises that can be done both indoors and outdoors, MentalUP fitness is here with 240+ exercise games and educational activities for kids of all ages!

From daily workouts to physical education activities, you can find all the games and activities that will improve your kid’s physical fitness and benefit their mental and physical wellness in the app.

3. Nature Journals

Keeping a nature journal is one of the best creative projects and activities for elementary kids. The activity boosts kids' observation skills, reinforces their biology, science, naturalistic, and linguistic skills, and expands their vision to think more creatively.

To create this fun and beneficial project, kids need an empty notebook and some pencils. Then, they can start keeping their journal during nature trips.

You can ask your kids to record the animals they see during the trips in their journals, draw pictures of them, and write what they think about these animals. Also, you can expand the subjects to plants or other components of nature.

4. Natural Brushes

Creating natural brushes is a great activity to foster kids' interest in experimentation, artistic expression, and color and shape recognition skills. Also, it is a great excuse to give kids a little exercise.

You can go on a nature walk with your kids and ask them to collect some branches and leaves. Then, kids can create natural brushes by taping or tying these branches and leaves together. Kids can use these hand-made brushes to create art pieces with different patterns, shapes, or items.

5. Mud Kitchen

Organizing a mud kitchen is a great idea to promote sensory play outdoors, inspire imagination, and keep kids occupied for enough time to spend their energy.

Simply put, a mud kitchen is a toy kitchen that is built for backyard play. Instead of kitchen ingredients, in a mud kitchen, kids use natural ingredients, like soil, flowers, leaves, and branches, during pretend play activities.

So it is great for encouraging kids to get closer to nature and teaching them about botany and biology.

6. Capturing a Time-Lapse Video

If your kid is into cinematography and enjoys watching movies or documentaries, you can spark their interest with this activity. It is simple yet beneficial for supporting kids artistic, imagination, and observation skills.

Just set up your phone or tablet to shoot a video and choose the time-lapse mode in your camera app. Then, kids can capture a video while building a treehouse, walking around, or observing animals, plants, and the sky.

After filming, you can watch these videos and discuss them to make the activity even more beneficial.

Tips to Choose the Most Appropriate Creative Activities for Kids

If you want to get the best out of creative activities, you should choose age- and level-appropriate activities that fit your kid's interests.

Here are some tips that will help you choose suitable creative activities for your kids:

• Avoid creative activities that can intimidate them.
• Offer creative activities as a free time activity, not a task to complete.
• Look for co-curricular activities that include practicing social and emotional skills.
• Be careful about accessories and utensils used in the activities and choose ones with safe ingredients.
• Check the additional values of activities, like motor-skill development or mental and physical development.
• Choose creative activities that can be played in a variety of ways, allowing them to experiment and observe.

Frequently Asked Questions

So far, we have shared the best indoor and outdoor creative activities for kids and shared some tips to help you choose the best ones for your kids. Now, it is time to answer all the questions that might come to your mind. Here are the most commonly asked questions about creative activities for kids.