Kids’ Games: Keeping Kids Entertained

Dear users and authors,
do you have any ideas on how to keep kids happily occupied during the current situation?

@Authors,
if you have relevant patterns (free or for purchase), feel free to share them here, but the focus of this thread is on discussion.

My daughter told me on the phone that my granddaughter is enthusiastically sewing T-shirts and crocheting a penguin. The girl is 9 1/2 years old and has been sewing since she was 7. She also practices a lot on her guitar, and thankfully they have a big yard where the child can run around—

My daughter is making an elf house. She glued pebbles onto an old sewer pipe with a hot glue gun, and my husband helped her fill in the gaps with grout.
Now it’s all drying.

My son is busy being a gardener. He’s starting the seedlings for his MILPA garden bed. We don’t have any popcorn maize seeds yet, though. They’re supposed to arrive next week.

Other than that, I got each of them a paint-by-numbers picture. They’re really enjoying that, too.

But honestly, most of the time they’re outside on the trampoline. They don’t want to get off it at all. They bounce around in there for hours on end.
And the positive effect is that the two of them are getting along better again. It’s been really tough lately, but since they’re not allowed to visit any friends and would otherwise be alone all day, having a sister or brother is actually a great thing.

My granddaughter loves sand art! There are ready-made kits with colorful sand.

I used to do a lot of paper crafts with my children. There are lots of origami patterns online, including easy ones.
My youngest used to invent his own board games and draw them, and make the game pieces himself.
Sort of like a dice game, with spaces for “skip a turn,” “roll again,” or spaces connected by a drawn ladder (i.e., go back a few spaces) or something like that.

Dice/or a dice cup with 6 dice (straight, or Yahtzee).
Puzzles are good too. There are also coloring books with “paint by numbers.”

We also had those plastic dominoes, set up like on Domino Day, all over the living room, tap one and all the pieces fall over.
Or playing with Lego—I still like doing that today, but unfortunately I don’t have any here.
So I have lots of ideas, but only for younger children; older children have higher expectations too.
You can also make small furniture with those popsicle sticks, a table or fruit crate for the dollhouse.
Fimo or that shrink plastic—you draw your own design, put it in the oven, and afterward you have your own bag charm.....
I have lots of craft punches here too; you can make confetti with them.

My kids loved putting on puppet shows. They’d come up with their own plays and then perform them.
And speaking of that—role-playing! Dressing up was always a hit all year round. We had a big dress-up box filled with fabric scraps, old clothes, and hats...

We spend a lot of time in the garden, where my two sons find plenty to do on their own:
They’ve planted a small garden bed and sown sunflower seeds—I spotted the first little leaves yesterday evening.
Then they used chalk to draw an obstacle course for their Bobby Cars on the pavement, and another time they drew squares for hopping. Once, they even set up a soccer course with obstacles and a final shot on goal.

You can do a lot with balls—"bowling" is very popular in our house: fill plastic bottles with a little water to make them more stable, and then throw, roll, or kick the ball. It also works great with the big water guns.