Children’s Day Celebration Ideas: For Outdoor & Indoor Fun Learning

Are you ready to make this Children’s Day truly special? This day is for going beyond balloons and chocolates to cherish, celebrate, and encourage the curious minds and big hearts of our little ones. What better way than to mark the day by blending fun with learning?

Here are some playful, screen-free, fun-learning indoor and outdoor activities for you and your children. Each one is designed to spark creativity and create lifelong memories. Let’s start! 

Indoor Activities

1. Escape Room

Setting up an escape room will take some serious effort, but your kids will enjoy it. Start by choosing a theme based on what your child enjoys — like Harry Potter, Disney stories, anime, or mysteries.  

Pick a theme and start building the clues and their answers. These clues should be in a sequence such that one leads to the other, leading to the final answer to help them escape the room. 

Next, choose the places you want to hide these clues. Include a few decoy hiding spots to make the search more challenging and fun. 

You can opt for a mixed format for clues, such as riddles, codes, and numerical puzzles, for your kids to solve. Once you have created all the clues and decided where to hide them, create a list of instructions to give your children. These instructions will give a solid structure to the entire activity. 

2. Rhyming Memory Game

The rhyming memory game blends vocabulary with phonetics. Begin by identifying pairs of items that rhyme together. For instance, a picture of a cat and a bat or a honey and a bunny. Print the pictures of these items and stick them individually on square-shaped cardboard. Alternatively, you can get these pictures on thick paper, which stays firm. 

Place these pictures upside down on the floor and begin playing. The rules are simple. 

• Flip one card at a time and see the image. 

• Flip another card and see the image. 

• If the item rhymes with the item on the card you flipped first, it's a match. You get a point and continue to flip other cards similarly. 

• If the items do not rhyme, you will flip the cards to hide the pictures and let the next player take the turn. 

This activity fosters memory, vocabulary, and rhyming patterns. If the items on the cards do not rhyme together, your kids will have to remember the location of the cards for the next round to find their rhyming pair. 

If you are on a hunt for some more memory games, do check our collection of Skillmatics memory games. These games are specially aimed at fostering better memory and recognition via screen-free play.

3. Put Together a Puzzle 

Solving jigsaw puzzles is a great way to spend quality time together while fostering learning. Our jigsaw puzzles are specially designed to not just help your kids identify the right pieces that go together but also enhance their knowledge. Here are some:

World Map Puzzle

Assemble our 96-piece world map puzzle and embark on a fun and educational journey! This engaging board puzzle comes with 100 country cards for children to learn about the countries of the world, their capitals, and discover 400+ fun facts! Ideal for kids aged 6 years and above, this map puzzle game is a fantastic way to combine learning with fun.

Piece & Play: Underwater Animals

Dive into the world of underwater animals with our engaging and giant floor puzzle. It combines fun with learning to help your child remember sea animal names while enhancing their cognitive skills like observation, process planning, problem-solving, and spatial reasoning. The puzzle is divided into 2 games. 

Game 1: Players have to match the colourful images on the game tiles to piece the puzzle together. 

Game 2: It is a search-and-find adventure where you have to read clues aloud and let your child find the matching pictures.

Animal Pattern Puzzle Set

Designed for children ages 18 months and up, this puzzle set encourages little ones to use their observation skills to match animals with their corresponding patterns.

Start by showing your child the completed puzzle, then let them match the animals to their patterns on the board to complete the puzzle. The puzzle set is crafted with bright, colorful wooden pieces and a visually appealing board. It captivates children's attention and makes learning fun.

4. Make a Kindness Tree

Teaching our kids good values is as important as helping them foster thinking skills. These values are essential social skills that will help them navigate social situations with grace. 

For this activity, you will need:

• A small, thin branch without leaves. A couple of twigs will also do. 

• Heart cutouts of different colours, big enough to write one-liners on. Punch holes in the top corner of these hearts. 

• Short strings (ribbons or wool) to tie the hearts to the branch. 

• A sponge block to place the branch in.

• A container for the sponge block.

• Decorative pebbles

Begin by narrating a short story about kindness. You can pick everyday themes such as lunch breaks at schools, sports block, helping an elderly person cross the road, or helping your mom set the dinner table to weave the story. After the story, understand what kindness means to your children and help them identify small acts of kindness they can do. 

Next, explain to them that kindness is not only about small acts but also about speaking kindly. Give them some examples and let them come up with their own. Have them write these examples on the hearts and hang them on the branch. 

Put the sponge into the container and place the branch firmly into the sponge. To hide the sponge, add some decorative pebbles on the top. You can encourage your child to keep adding more hearts with words of kindness that they get to hear at school, home, or any other place. 

5. Password

Password is a group activity that your child can enjoy with their friends. You will need a whiteboard, a marker, and a duster for this activity. Have everyone sit in front of the whiteboard. Call a child out and have them stand in front of others with their back facing the whiteboard. 

Now, write a word on the whiteboard. The task is simple. The child who’s standing has to guess the word a.k.a the password, with the help of clues that other children will give them. You can play this game in rounds based on different categories if you’d like to make it more interesting. 

Outdoor Activities

6. Journal What You See

Journal What You See teaches your kids to be mindful. It requires them to be present in the moment, observe what they see, and transfer these details to their journals. You can pick any location you want for this activity — a community park, aquarium, playground, or zoo. 

Give them each a small journal with blank pages, pencils, and erasers to draw what they see. Let them also write a line or two on why they decided to journal this. This activity will offer you insights into your child’s world — what things they see, what stands out for them, and how they think. 

7. Obstacle Course 

If you want to get your kids up and moving, then an obstacle course is a good idea. Pick a location with flat land and maybe some grass. 

Arrange for different obstacles such as hurdles, hula hoops, or skipping rope. You may also want to create obstacles of your own with different items. For instance, balancing a spoon and a lemon, hopping with a sack on, or balancing on a beam. If you find flat stones or bricks, tyres, and large branches, you can use them too.

Arrange them in an order, mixing the complexity levels of the task to create a course. Set the timer and see who finishes it in the least possible time.

8. My Flower Garden 

Our children don’t get enough time and opportunity to connect with nature. So this Children’s Day, let’s try to change it with this simple activity. If you have a backyard, nothing like it. If you don’t, you can use planting pots at your home.

Buy some floral saplings or seeds for such plants of your kids’ choice and soil (if you are planting at home). 

If you are planting at home:

• Sit together, and begin by taking out the soil in a big container and mixing it well. Let your children feel the texture of the soil and get their hands dirty. 

• Next, add some soil to the pot, place the floral sapling, and add some more soil to fix it. 

If you are planting in your backyard:

• You may need something to dig up the soil. Let your children help you with it. 

• Allow them to dig with their hands too. Help them plant the sapling and make sure it is placed well into the ground. 

Have your kids water the plant every day and notice the changes they see. While planting, discuss how plants grow, what they need, and how your kids can take care of the plants. 

9. Nature’s Paintbrush

Take your children to a park with some art supplies. They must have the following items with them:

• Drawing sheet/book

• Paints and brushes

• Cup and some water

• Wet tissues (to clean themselves)

Now, ask them to go around the park and collect items they can paint with. For instance, leaves, stones, twigs, and pine cones. Once they are done collecting the items, have them sit together. Ask them to use these items to create an artwork. 

For example, they can cover the leaves with paint and imprint it on the drawing sheet to draw leaves. Alternatively, you can invest in the following art activities to make your child’s experience even better.

Rock Painting Kit

This engaging art and craft activity allows children to express themselves through vibrant designs inspired by their favourite animals, planets, and more.

What's included in the package?

• 8 Rocks

• 8 Paint Markers

• Colourful Gems

• Googly Eyes

• An Instruction Manual.

Disc-o Art & Craft Activity

Turn Ceramic discs into disc-o-art! Spark creativity with this captivating art and craft activity, where kids can transform ceramic discs into a variety of imaginative creations, like cupcakes, animals, monsters, unicorns, spaceships, and more! Our soft, flexible air-dry clay and mess-free painting using our drip-free paint markers, designed for easy application on the discs. 

The best part? It is a simple, screen-free activity inspiring focused creativity. Watch your child enhance their design and fine motor skills, creating endless variations of decorative discs with this kit!

Sidewalk Chalk Activity Kit

Swap screen time for sunshine and encourage kids to transform ordinary sidewalks into dazzling masterpieces. This kit includes 18 vibrant chalk sticks and 15 original games and activities that are perfect for outdoor fun! Play strategy and learning games and get artistic with these unique sidewalk activities for screen-free days!

10. Keep Up the Balloon

This is an easy-to-do activity with your kids, which fosters teamwork and eye-hand coordination. The good part? All you will need is a blown balloon. And the best part is that the task is very simple. You push the balloon into the air, and then your child, along with their friends, have to keep it up in the air for as long as they can by hitting it. You can start with a single balloon and then increase the count to increase the complexity.

Conclusion

While it is tempting to celebrate Children’s Day with lots of sweet treats and gifts, incorporating learning disguised as fun makes the celebration more enriching. Children learn best when they’re engaged and excited, and these activities help you do exactly that. 

At Skillmatics, we have a range of educational games for screen-free, fun learning. From puzzles to board games, art and craft games, and STEM toys, our games help your children develop their skills while enjoying their time. Check out our entire collection here. 

Remember, the best gift you can give your child is the opportunity to learn, grow and explore! 

Product Links:

Skillmatics Memory Games 

Skillmatics World Map Puzzle

Skillmatics Piece Play Underwater Animals 

Skillmatics Animal Pattern Puzzle 

Rock Painting Kit | Mess-Free Art & Craft Activity (ages 4-12) 

Skillmatics Disc-o Art 

Skillmatics Sidewalk Chalk Activity Kit  

Amazon.co.uk: Skillmatics