Activities for Kids and Grandparents with Limited Mobility – Spending time with grandparents should always be enjoyable for little ones. Grandparents, freed from the primary parenting responsibilities, can spoil their grandchildren in ways they might not have with their own children. While some parents might sigh at this, it’s a great joy for older adults to spend time with their grandchildren without worrying about providing the healthiest meals or the most educational entertainment. They can simply have fun!
Of course, this is different for grandparents who take on regular caregiving roles, as they do need to set appropriate expectations. But that’s a topic for another time.
Activities for Kids and Grandparents with Limited Mobility
When the goal is purely to have fun, there are plenty of activities grandparents and grandchildren can enjoy together, even when a granparent has mobility problems due to age or health conditions. Here are some ideas for home-based activities:
Crafts and Hobbies
Crafts provide endless hours of fun for all ages. Here are some of our favourites:
- Paper Plate Animals: Turn inexpensive paper plates into animals using paint, googly eyes, felt for feet and ears, and pipe cleaners for tails. These are a personal favourite in our household!
- Tissue Paper Flowers: Create colourful flowers by crinkling and gluing tissue paper onto cardboard or paper stems. Perfect fun for a rainy day.
- Sock Puppets: Use old socks (make sure they’re clean) to make puppets. Add buttons for eyes, felt for mouths, and wool for hair.
- Homemade Playdough: Mix flour, salt, water and food colouring to create homemade playdough which can be moulded into various shapes. A great, messy activity so make sure the kids help clean up afterwards.
- Pasta Art: Glue various shapes of pasta onto paper to make interesting and textured pictures. You can even paint them if you’re feeling very creative.
- DIY T-Shirts: Use fabric paint or indelible markers to design and personalise plain t-shirts.
- Collage Art: Cut out pictures from old magazines to create collages on paper or cardboard.
Watching Films or TV Shows
Enjoy a film or binge-watch a TV series together, creating a mini home theatre experience with popcorn and comfortable seating makes this activity a bit more exciting for everyone. If you are stuck for film ideas to watch with little ones then try the classics such as Finding Nemo, Toy Story or The Lion King.
Reading Together
Choose books that both the child and grandparent can enjoy. Depending on the child’s age you could take turns reading. Doing different voices for different characters is popular in our house. Alternatively listen to audiobooks together.
Puzzles and Games
Play board games or card games that are not physically demanding and can be done seated at a table.
Music and Singing
Listen to music and sing along to everyone’s favourite songs. Make it a goal to learn all the words off by heart (that will impress the parents when they come home). If someone plays a musical instrument encourage them to show off their talents or simply play toy instruments. Tambourines and maracas are great even for the less musically able.
Photo Scrapbooking
Look through old photos and create a scrapbook together, organising photos and adding captions. This is also a great way to preserve your family history for future generations.
Memory Games
Play memory games to stimulate the cognitive function of the older people and develop a good memory in the kids – always a useful skill. We love to play the game where you lay out items on a tray, get a minute to memorise them, then cover the items with a tea towel and try to remember as many as possible. Does anyone know what that is called?
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