Need some ideas for fun activities to do at home with your daughter? Let’s face it we can’t take our daughters out all of the time. The majority of the time spent with our daughters are at home. Our awesome list of activities to do at home will be sure to keep your daughter having fun no matter their age!
1. Treasure Hunt
This is one of my daughter’s favorite things to do with me at home. She has a blast with it, and is always begging me afterwards to put together one again. The great thing about treasure hunts is that you can put them together in no time at all, or you can go all out and make custom treasure maps that she has to follow, and really gets her imagination going.
For a quick and easy treasure hunt, simply write down clues on pieces of paper and at the end of the treasure hunt you can have a surprise for her. The surprise could be as simple as a treat or as elaborate as buried treasure. Either way, a treat at the end of the hunt will have your daughter jumping for joy.
For a more advanced treasure hunt you could draw a map of your house and make the clues relate to the map. Name each room something different such as the ‘enchanted forest’ or ‘smugglers cove’, use your imagine with it and just have fun. Your daughter will have a blast and be able to use her imagination as she goes through the treasure hunt.
2. Hide and Seek
Do not give up on the classics! Girls love to play hide and seek. My daughter could play hide and seek for hours. If you want to put a twist on hide and seek you could play hide and seek tag.
3. Build A Fort
What girl doesn’t love a blanket fort? They are exciting to build and once you have their hideaway built you can have all sorts of adventures together. It can be anything from your daughter’s princess castle to a secret hideaway. This would be the perfect location for a princess tea party as well.
They can be as simple as a blanket draped over a couch and chair, or as grand as blankets and bedsheets tied together and hung across the whole room. Clothes pins or large binder clips work great to hold the blankets together.
4. Make A Youtube Video
Get out your smartphone out and make a movie with your daughter. Have her pick the idea for the movie and then help her act and film. Bring out the inner thespian in you.
5. Put On A Play
Spend an afternoon planning a play and then perform it for the family. Let her pick her favorite story and make the words from the book come alive in her very own play.
6. Make Believe
Girls love to play make believe. Get down on her level and go all in with whatever comes to her imagination.
7. Write A Story
Help your daughter write down one of the stories that she tells you all of the time. You could write it for her and she could draw the pictures for it.
8. Paint Nails
My daughter loves it when I paint her nails. And yes, its ok if you let her paint your nails too. It’s important to show your daughter that she is important and worth it.
9. Cook A Meal Together
This could be as simple as cheese quesadillas, or as fancy as a four course meal. My daughter loves to cook with me. Maybe the two of you could wake up early and surprise your wife with breakfast in bed.
10. Learn Something New Together
When you’re both learning together it is a lot of fun. It lets her know that you don’t know everything, and are willing to learn and grow even as an adult.
11. Craft
Save some cardboard boxes and build a princess castle. You could also go on a hunt around the house to look for everyday items that the two of you could turn into something grand. We recently finished our basement, my daughter went crazy for all of the boxes and packing materials from the construction supplies. We made all sorts of creations out of it.
12. Shoot Some Hoops
Shooting hoops is a pastime that my daughter loves. It doesn’t have to be super competitive, it could just be a good time for you and your daughter to talk and have a little fun. If you want to play a game and take it up a notch from just shooting, you could play all sorts of games with just two people. Fun games that my daughter loves are HORSE and Around the World.
13. Science Experiment
Science experiments can be mind blowing. They are a great way to spend a fun afternoon with your daughter. As an added bonus they’ll be learning something new while they’re having fun.
When I was young, a science experiment that really stuck with me was building an electric motor. Below is a video on how to build a simple electric motor. This is a fun experiment that your daughter will love.
14. Tea Party
Really set the stage with this activity. Go all in with your daughter by setting a nice table, getting out some fancy teas cups, and dress up.
15. Obstacle Course
Bring the inner ninja out of your daughter by building her an epic obstacle course. Look around your house and get creative designing the obstacle course. You could use couch cushions, hula hoops, boxes, chairs, jump ropes, and other items that you can find around your house.
16. Truth, Truth, Story
This is a fun simple game that my daughter loves to play. To play you tell three stories. Two of them are true stories and one of them is made up. The other person has to guess what one of the stories was made u\. As and added bonus to playing this game, you will get to learn more about your daughter as she tells you stories. You will also get the chance to tell her stories from your life as well.
17. Clay
Modeling clay is a fun, inexpensive, and creative way to spend an afternoon. Let your daughter make whatever comes to her mind, and in the end you can bake the clay in the oven so she can put it up on the shelf, or play with it later.
18. Paint
Go to your local craft or hobby store and buy a couple canvas frames and a paint set. You could paint whatever comes to your mind, or try and copy a picture.
Recently, my daughter and I painted a picture of my grandpa’s farm for my mom. It was a great way for of us to bond. My daughter loved mixing the paint together to create different shades of color. One of her favorite parts was seeing my mom’s reaction when we gave it to her for Mother’s Day.
19. Play Cards
An hour can seem like a minute when you’re having fun playing a card game. There’s a lot of two player card games you can play with a standard deck of cards. We like playing rummy, go fish, old maid, slap jack, war, and BS.
If you have more than two people playing the card game then there are some games by Grandpa Beck that my kids absolutely love. The first one is called Cover Your Assets you can find it on Amazon here. The great thing about Cover Your Assets is that kindergarten age kids to adults can play this game and truly have a blast doing it.
A lot of games for younger children are ,let’s face it really, boring for adults. With Cover Your Assets that isn’t the case. The crazy part about this game is that I try to use strategy and still my kindergartner will beat all of us regularly. It is great that everyone at the table, no matter their age, truly has a chance to win.
The other Grandpa Beck game that my kids love is Skull King. It can be found on Amazon here. Skull King will be a little harder for real young kids to play, but I have a 7 year old that dominates Skull King. If you’ve ever played hearts, spades, or rook then Skull King will feel really familiar to you.
In Skull King each player predicts how many tricks they are going to win in the round. If you win the number of tricks that you predicted then you get points. If you don’t get the number of tricks you predicted, or you go over then you subtract points.
There are also fun wild cards in the game such as pirates, jolly rogers, and the skull king. In the expansion pack there are even more cards such as mermaids and the dreaded Kraken. Each wild card can do different things that makes the game just a lot of fun. The best part of the whole game is whoever loses has to do the dishes. I highly recommend both of those Grandpa Beck games. My family has spent hours laughing playing them.
20. Read A Book
Reading is a great way to spend time with your daughter. It will help her with her reading as well as her imagination. There’s all sorts of adventures that you can have with your daughter when you read a book.
21. Frisbee
Get outside and toss the frisbee back and forth. There is something mesmerizing about watching a frisbee float through the air. Just simply throwing a frisbee back and forth is a ton of fun.
Frisbee golf or disc golf is also a really fun sport to play. Disc golf is a lot like actual golf where each hole has a number of throws you can take in order to get par. One of the great things about disc golf is that most of the courses are free to play at, and the discs are relatively inexpensive as well. Here is a good starter disc set on Amazon. You can also get your own disc golf target for your yard to practice with your daughter. You can find a great disc target basket on Amazon here.
22. Ride Bikes
Riding bikes is a great way to spend some time with your daughter. Go for a stroll around the neighborhood. This would be a perfect opportunity to get your daughter to open up and tell you about things going on in her life.
23. Bowling
Bowling is a great game to play with your daughter. You don’t necessarily have to go to a bowling ally to bowl with your daughter. You don’t even have to buy a bowling set.
Why not just make your own? You could save up bottles from your bottled water or anything you have. Then just grab one of your daughters toy balls and now you have your very own bowling set. This is an inexpensive and fun way to bowl with your daughter. You could even jazz it up by letting your daughter color the pins/bottles, and you could put masking tape down on the floor to make it look like an actually bowling lane.
24. Star Gazing
You could spend the evening telling your daughter about your favorite constellations and the stories behind them. Don’t worry if you don’t know any constellations, there are tons of free star gazing apps that are a lot of fun. You can simply put your phone up to the sky and it will show you where the constellations are at.
25. Puzzle
Putting puzzles together will really get you and your daughter’s brain working. The other great thing about puzzling is that you can take that time to really talk and get to know your daughter better. You can find out how they’re doing at school, what their favorite subject in school is, what they want to be when they grow up, or what their favorite thing to do is. Seriously, this could be the activity to get your daughter to open up and talk to you.
26. Camping
Camping is a ton of fun and you don’t have to be in the mountains to enjoy it. Why not set up a tent in the backyard or you could even set up a camp in your house.