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You know how growing up we’d ask our parents for things and they’d tell us no because we had it at home? Well, now I’m one of those moms, and here’s how you can be too. There are so many fun things out there you can buy for your kiddos, and while we do fill our houses with them, our houses already come pre stocked with a lot of the things we need to make them ourselves. Full transparency, I’d prefer to buy toys than make them myself. But sometimes, it’s just not realistic whether it’s because we don’t have the space or it’s out of our budget. For that reason, I created this list of DIY activities that don’t (always) require a trip to the store.
Build a car ramp out of cardboard:
Before you take out your recycling check out if you have any long, thin cardboard boxes. Set one end up on the edge of your couch, playpen, coffee table, or other similar in height piece of furniture and race cars down! You can also see if you can get balls to roll down but it’s a bit harder to keep them on the ramp.
Car drop:
Similar to the last activity you can use pieces of cardboard and set them up taped to a wall. You can do this to create an obstacle course for your cars to run down. Cardboard boxes and tape are usually found in the house, but you will need toy cars for this activity if you don’t have them already. We used cars from this set that Ollie got for his birthday, so to us it really was an all from home activity. Paper towel rolls cut in half also work great for this. You just tape them slanting down on a wall criss crossing back and forth, and then you can run cars, balls, or any other rolling toy down this new obstacle course.
Pots and pan drum set:
One of my personal favorites is making a drum set out of pots, pans, and whatever cooking utensils you have lying around. This one’s great because you really don’t need to buy anything else to make it happen. Just a quick stop in your kitchen and you’re good to go!
Stacking cups:
Grab some plastic cups of different sizes and play stacking games! There’s tons of great stacking cups for sale, but if you’re not looking to take up space with something you’re unsure is worth the buy, or maybe is just out of budget right now, then go ahead and do this DIY version at home!
Post it notes wall:
If you’re looking for easy at-home DIY activities that can help you develop your babies fine motor skills, then look no further. Simply grab a stack of sticky notes, stick some to the wall, and see how long they last. No doubt your baby will make it their personal mission to pull them all off as fast as possible.
Make play dough:
One of my personal favorites is using some ingredients from your shelf to make homemade play dough. Tons of fun, easy to store, and reusable! It only takes a few minutes to make yourself, but the play time with it can last hours. Here’s a link to my post explaining how to make your own play dough.
Straw games:
I’m not sure if anyone else has a kid that’s obsessed with straws, but I can’t go out to eat without my son wanting to grab a straw wherever we are. He loved straws so much that we ended up buying a pack for home, and that’s where the fun began. We used them to sword fight, we shot them across the room, we even stuck them in our hair. There’s so many different ways to turn a pack of straws into a game, and if you’re looking to grab a huge pack of them you can just order them online so you always have them in stock!
Baby wipes treasure box:
Another fun one that can be done with things you have at home is turning old baby wipes packages into a treasure box! By this I mean taking an empty package and putting pieces of fabric, socks, or small toys inside and letting your baby pull them out. I’m sure we’ve all had those moments where our kids start pulling baby wipe after baby wipe out of the packages- now we don’t have to! Let them open, empty, and refill their own!
Animal hide and seek:
This one does require having play scarves at home, but if you happen to have some (or want to grab some here) then there’s so many games to create with them! We initially started playing hide and seek ourselves by putting the scarves over our own heads, but then it turned into a game of hiding our stuffies. Eventually we turned this game into tying scarves around in different places to stick our stuffies in and then walk around looking for them. This game is particularly fun for babies that just mastered walking since they love to just stroll around the house anyways.
Fort Building:
Building a fort is an absolutely timeless DIY activity and saves so much space and money. I was originally looking at all sorts of play houses and tents for my baby to play in and then realized how much I loved building forts as a kid. Grab some couch cushions, pillows, and blankets and then you have a fun activity followed by a fun place to play with just items in your house! I found using chairs and chip bag clips to hold blankets to the chairs helped us build a larger and more sturdy play house. We also have friends that have the nugget play couch who build absolutely amazing forts at their house, so if you have one of those you have endless possibilities. We did eventually find a cheaper play couch alternative for our play room which totally upped our fort building game as well. This was perfect for us because it allowed us to have all soft surfaces to play on instead of the hard chairs.
Pillow stacking:
Another great activity is stacking pillows, cushions, play couches, or whatever other soft objects you have around the house to create a huge pillow pile to jump and climb around in. I often found myself looking at climbing blocks, but never wanting to spend the money, so this became our alternative. And honestly? I’m pretty sure Ollie liked it just as much as he would’ve enjoyed expensive climbing blocks.
DIY tunnel:
So this idea actually came from my own childhood because I used to love doing this with my mom. You will need some big boxes, the bigger the better, and some tape. Kids are fairly easy to entertain and just giving them a box would probably be pretty exciting to them still, but if you want to really get into it you can really get creative. Anything from taping a few boxes together, to creating an elaborate maze can be fun. If you want to create a maze you can cut a hole in the side of a box to connect a different one to. This creates the option of going in two different directions for your kid to choose from. You can also make one straight line of boxes to create a funnel to connect different places. This could be great with fort building too!
