Some of these activities build strength and eye-hand coordination, while others provide needed exercise, movement or sensory input. Fine motor skills are also incorporated when you include crafting with all those odds and ends that you’ve cleared out of closets and drawers.  Here are some ways to spring your children into action! 

• Clothing sort: set up boxes that your kids can aim and throw clothes into that need to be sorted into keep, save or donate.
• Sew a hem across the bottom of a vest top and turn an old shirt into a fashionable, reusable grocery bag.  Have your kids paint or decorate the outsides.
• Old T-shirt strips can also be woven into a colorful rag rug, using a child’s hula hoop as a form.
• Washing windows: What kid doesn’t love using a squirt bottle or a hose?  You can also use window markers or shaving cream to practice drawing or writing before the cleaning.
• Skate Dusting: Use commercial dusting cloths or lightly spray the bottoms of your child’s socks with a floor cleaner and send them skating to a cleaner floor - carefully!
• Scavenger Hunt:  Have kids search under couch cushions, under beds and behind shelves, then collect what they find.  Give them a list to check off what items they’ve found.  See who can collect the most treasures and then sort, put away or donate.
• Paint small, used jars with chalkboard paint and have kids label them to collect small toys (legos, doll shoes, marbles)
• The inside of a bottle cap can house small drawings or pictures and then be used as magnets or attached to a loop to become a necklace.
• Have kids help paint an old decorative frame – run string across the inside to hold jewellery or small doll clothes, line with pegboard to mount hooks for kids’ tools or craft supplies, cover with old maps and fill with family photos from far away places or line with cork for an instant notice board.
• Use other odds and ends like old crinkly tissue paper, beads, old magazines, unused craft supplies, ribbon, wrapping paper, streamers, fabric scraps, silk flowers, cotton balls, buttons, cards, etc to embellish containers, notebooks, gloves, jars, candle holders, picture frames, shoes or sunglasses.