One of the benefits of being required to stay at home is that you can enjoy being with your family members daily. However, if you have kids who are physically active, it can be a struggle to think of fun activities to do while staying indoors. Especially if you or your family members are the sporty type, not being able to go outside or go to the gym can be frustrating.
You must have already tried a lot of online activities with your family members. If you want something that doesn’t require an Internet connection or a computer, then try these non-contact sports activities that you can enjoy at home. These can help keep you healthy and active while staying indoors. Bonus: all these activities make it easier to observe social distancing so you can play these in your backyard too. Not all of these can be officially considered as “sports”; but they are all fun and competitive activities to keep boredom out of your day.
Balloon Volleyball
Use a balloon and fans to play a game of volleyball. Instead of using your hands, each team uses fans to keep the balloon floating for a set amount of time or for as long as they can. To maintain social distancing, assign a particular area to be guarded by each team member so they don’t overlap with other team members during the game.
Blow Bubbles
Get yourself a set of bubble makers and let the kids and adults enjoy! Divide yourselves into 2 teams. Each team assigns one or two members to blow bubbles while the rest of the team tries to pop as many as they can in a set amount of time. The other team counts how many bubbles are popped by the playing team. The team who pops the most number of bubbles in the least amount of time wins. You can do 3 rounds or more and total the score for each team at the end of all the rounds. You can also assign areas for each member to maintain social distancing.
Charades
Create your own game by drawing different animals, gestures, etc. on index cards. Draw each card from a hat or box and act them out to see who can guess the most correctly. You can even make it a travel-themed charade where you try to guess different events from family travel pictures. No need for physical contact in this game at all. All you need is your imagination. This is definitely one of the non-contact sports that you can enjoy at home any time!
Dance Parties
Create a playlist of your family’s favorite dance tunes and dance away. Pick a theme for each day so you can try out different songs. You may also assign a different family member to pick the songs for each day. The winner can be picked by most votes at the end of the week.
Hide and Seek
This is one fun activity where social distancing is easy to observe. Make sure there’s a timer as to how long each seeker has to find those who are hiding. The seeker who finds out the most number of hiding spots, where each family member is hiding, in the least amount of time, wins.
Hula Hoop
This can be a contest between individuals or between teams. The team or person who can keep the hula hoop turning for the longest time is the winner. If you have more than one hula hoop, then both teams can play at the same time.
Jump Rope
Similar to the hula hoop game, this can be done individually or as a team. The team who lasts the longest or who has the most number of jumps while skipping, wins.
Name That Tune
Form a team and create a playlist of songs that you want the other team to guess the title of. You can change it up a bit by having the other team sing the chorus instead. They just need to make sure it’s the correct lyrics to get a point. Another variation is to guess the artist name or band name or the year it was first played. You and your family members can make up your own rules!
Statue Game
Assign a person as the “Curator”. The Curator stands at one end of the room or backyard while the rest of the members or “Statues” stand on the opposite area. The Curator turns their back and counts from 1 to 7 (or 10, you decide). Each time the Curator turns their back, the Statues are allowed to move to get closer to the Curator. Whenever the Curator stops counting and looks back, the Statues need to freeze in their positions.
If the Curator catches a Statue moving, he/she will be sent back to the starting point. Any one of the Statues can tag the Curator but they should not get caught by the Curator themselves. If they get caught, then they replace the Curator and the game starts again. For social distancing purposes, a fan or handkerchief can be used for tagging instead.
Trash Basketball
The best time to do this is after cleaning or decluttering your house. Select all the dry, paper waste (or cans or plastic bottles, etc. – just make sure they’re dry and clean) and divide it into 2 piles. Ideally, the piles should have the same amount of trash. Get trash cans and put them at the same distance away from the pile of trash. The objective of the game is to be able to shoot the most amount of trash in the trash cans within a set amount of time.
You can play these non-contact sports and enjoy them at home even if you’re not in the same house with the other players. Just take videos of each other and share it on a video conferencing platform to see who wins!
We’re sure you have other ideas that are not on this list. We would love to hear them! Don’t forget to maintain social distancing during the game, disinfect any game items you use and practice proper hand washing after playing. Let us all transform boredom into more productive and fun activities.
Featured Image: Original Image by Daniela Dimitrova from Pixabay.
