Fun Quiet Games for Kids

Anagram Challenge

• For this game you need lots of letter tiles, which you can acquire from games you have around the house like scrabble. Alternately, make your own by cutting out typed letters from card stock. Kids can play this game alone or as teams, depending on how many children you are entertaining. Create words that your children will be able to unscramble; use simple words for young children and slightly more complex for older children. Choose a theme, like farmyard animals, and give the children a stack of letters that create words that fit this theme, such as duck, cat, goose and chicken. The first player to unscramble her words wins.

The Masterpiece

• This game involves a number of children and will test their creativity. Attach a large, blank sheet of paper to the wall. The children are tasked with drawing on the paper one at a time. The first child will draw a simple shape like a circle or a square. The second child will add to this image to create a new picture, such as adding petals to the circle to make a flower. Each child continues to add to the paper until there is an entirely different picture in front of them. You can alternately, use magazine images, pieces of fabric or other materials to do a similar project.

Create a Creature

• You can play this game with your child alone or turn it into a game with a group of children. In this game, allow students to create an animal using fruit and vegetables, such as grapes, lemons, carrots, oranges, etc. Each child is assigned a different animal and given time to construct that animal using toothpicks to connect the fruit. When all children are finished, number the animals and have children view them and guess what kind of animal they are. The child that guesses the most right wins.