If you’re looking for activities to do with your kids that pulls them away from their screens to get their bodies and brains moving, we have a list of eight activities you can easily do at home, all inspired by popular children’s video games.
1. Backyard Angry Birds
Inspired by the popular mobile game “Angry Birds”, you can create your own pig fort and let your kids attack with their own Angry Birds. We found the tutorial by sheknows to be a great reference. All you need are some cardboard boxes, bouncy balls and painting supplies.
Construct the cardboard boxes and paint them to look like wood or ice cubes (and, if you so desire, spray paint some of them gold). For the birds and pigs, buy bouncy balls that resemble the original character colors (green, red, blue, yellow) in whatever sizes you’d like. But make sure they’re big enough to draw the pig and Angry Bird faces on!
Once you’re done painting, construct that pig fort, place the pig bouncy balls in it and let your kids throw their Angry Birds as hard as they can to win the game!
2. Super Mario obstacle course
If your kids love Mario games, then they’ll surely love to play as him in real life! This Mario-inspired obstacle course is by kidsactivities and has great tutorials on how to DIY this course. We’ll explain a few of the obstacles you can create, and all you need are some brown balloons, paper plates, blue streamers, bubbles and small red plastic balls.
Hang the streamers on trees and use either a bubble machine or hand-blown bubbles to recreate the water-themed worlds in Super Mario games and have your kids run through it. Have other participants throw the red plastic balls at the people going through the water course. If you want to make it a little harder, you can add Goombas to have them stomp on while going through.
To create a Goomba, blow up your brown balloons and tape them to a paper plate. To create their faces, you can either draw them on with marker or print it off from the internet and cut it out and tape it on. Place them on the ground among the streamers and let the fun begin!
3. Lego video game art
For this activity you’re just gonna need lots of legos and your imagination. You won’t need to build a complex 3D lego figure; instead, stick with a 2D pixel art version. Financial Post explains how they did this by looking up a pixel Mario from the old games and used that as reference to create a 2D Mario! Your children can also take this opportunity to recreate their favorite video game characters as 2D lego art.
4. Minecraft wall art
Minecraft continues to be a popular game among kids, so maybe yours would like to color their favorite Minecraft characters. All you need are some blank square canvases, rulers and painting supplies. Amy Latta Creations has a simple tutorial to follow and create amazing Minecraft art.
First off, you’ll need to draw 8x8 grids onto your square canvases. Then you can look up an image of a Minecraft character and paint in the squares individually until you finish! Some Minecraft characters require more colors than others, so some may require more prep than others.
5. DIY lightsabers
If your kids love Star Wars, then they’ll love creating their own lightsabers. A tutorial by Keeping It Simple Crafts is cheap and easy to make for any family. All you need are some glow sticks, pipe insulation foam and silver and red duct tape. The size of your pipe insulation foam should be small enough to stick a glow stick in the center of it, but if not you can glue some yarn to the bottom of the glow stick to make it fit snug in the hole.
Cut the foam into six-inch pieces and connect the glow sticks to them (make sure the glow sticks are already cracked and glowing). Using the duct tape, decorate the pipe foam to look like the handle of a lightsaber and voila, you’re done! Now your kids can have fun being Jedis and Sith.
6. Cosplay
Kids like to have fun dressing up, so why not dress up as their favorite video game characters? Known as cosplay, you can help your kids create their costumes using materials at home or anything you may find at a thrift store. There are many tutorials online you can use to create a costume your kids will love.
7. Pokemon book marks
These origami bookmarks by RedTedArt can be an enjoyable experience for kids of all ages. You’ll need different colors of paper, scissors, glue sticks and pens. Follow the origami steps on their website to create a simple origami corner bookmark, then you’ll use your pens to draw the faces of different Pokemon creatures. Now your kids have their own personalized bookmark to use when reading!
8. Official Nintendo crafts
Nintendo has lots of crafts and activities that you can print off for your kids to do. They have a wide variety, like origami, activity books, DIY paper crafts and more. You’ll need a printer to access these activities and the best part is they’re all free.