Parent Hacks: Indoor Activities
Simple and fun ideas for parents to keep kids busy with creative indoor play.
Dry Erase Canvas
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Laminators are a perfect tool for creating reusable cards and games that are dry-erase friendly and easy to put together. Try making your own custom BINGO cards, coloring sheets, counting games
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word puzzles or print out photos that kids can color on again and again. Save your creations and bind them with a metal ring to bring to restaurants or on long car trips.
Getting Active
When you’re playing indoors, there are plenty of ways to stay active without putting your windows and glassware in danger, using simple household items. Scotch® Expressions Masking Tape removes cleanly within 14 days on most surfaces.
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Spider Web – Use black Scotch® Expressions Masking Tape to set up a spider web in an open door frame or a hallway. Apply tape sticky side out, and see if you can get a crumpled ball of paper to stick.
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Spy Games – Use strips of Scotch® Expressions Masking Tape to string up lines of yarn between the walls of a hallway, making a “laser beam” obstacle course to crawl through.
Investigative Fingerprints (Grades 2–6)
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Have some little detectives in your house? Here’s a fun activity that will keep them busy learning about fingerprints.
Materials: Baby powder or corn starch; Scotch® Magic™ Tape; A small brush, like a paintbrush; A piece of black construction paper; Pencils
Have your kids press their fingers onto a clean surface, like a kitchen countertop. Then have them sprinkle some baby powder or corn starch over the area they touched. Use a small brush and gently brush away the powder.
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This should reveal the fingerprints. Place Scotch® Magic™ Tape on top of the print, lift the tape off, and then stick it onto a piece of black construction paper.
Try a variety of surfaces in the kitchen and around the house. Challenge kids to see how many fingerprints they can collect. Have everyone in the family touch a different surface, and then your kids can figure out who touched which surface.
This idea comes to us from our friends at Post-it® Brand. Check out their website for more fun science activities.
Cardboard Creativity
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Julian McFaul is the founder of Adventures in Cardboard, a summer camp in Minnesota focused on crafty construction and serious creativity, where kids learn to give used boxes a new life. Each year, his campers explore everything from theatrical role playing to character development to field games, while they build arms, armor,
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and giant castles entirely out of cardboard. Reuse your boxes and download his instructions for building a Knight’s Helmet or Cooktop Oven. For more information about Julian and Adventures in Cardboard, check out his website.
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Whether you’ve got a dragon to slay or a fortress to protect, every warrior needs reliable — and fearsome — headgear. Click here to get Julian's step by step instructions for building a great horned helmet using little more than cardboard and Scotch® Heavy Duty Shipping Packaging Tape.
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Ideal for master bakers and weekend connoisseurs alike, the cardboard cooktop oven is a top of the line appliance for all your imaginary cooking needs. Click here to download Julian’s step by step recipe for transforming day old cardboard and Scotch® Heavy Duty Shipping Packaging Tape into a culinary powerhouse.
