Imaginative Indoor Play

• Kids young and old love to play dress-up.Jupiterimages/BananaStock/Getty Images
  
  When kids have access to non-specific materials that invite their use of imagination, the opportunities are endless. Give your kids a stack of sheets and blankets, and a bucket of clothespins and let them create indoor forts. Sure, they might have to rearrange the furniture just a little, but they'll love the opportunity for unstructured, creative playtime. You can also repurpose cardboard boxes -- kids can use them to build a castle. Give each child a scrap of fabric or an old pillowcase and a set of markers, and let him draw flags to hang at the entry of the castles. A trunk full of Mom or Dad's old clothes and old costumes invites kids to play dress-up.
  
  

Hands-On Creativity

• Kids love to paint with their hands.George Doyle/Stockbyte/Getty Images
  
  Kids love to get their hands dirty. Give them a few cans of store-bought Play-Doh and a few kitchen utensils, and they'll have fun creating cakes, pies, people, animals and one-of-a-kind creatures. If you don't want to buy materials, make homemade salt dough with a few ingredients from the pantry.
  
  For some outdoor creativity, prepare a sand tray with your kids. A large plastic under-the-bed storage box is a perfect sand tray. Fill it half-way with play sand, along with a collection of tiny plastic animals, toy cars, measuring cups, spoons and seashells. Let kids play with the tray on the patio or in the yard and slide it beneath patio furniture to store it out of sight.
  
  Finger painting and drawing with sidewalk chalk are activities that most kids enjoy. They get to be artistic while getting a little bit messy. Hang wet finger paint masterpieces on a clothes line outside to dry.
  
  

Party Games

• All kids need to play freeze tag is wide open space to run.BananaStock/BananaStock/Getty Images
  
  Treasure hunts are fun activities that most kids enjoy. Clues for younger kids can be photographs or images on paper, but older kids can solve riddles to find their treasure. Scavenger hunts are another fun way of challenging kids. Divide a group of kids into teams and give each group a list of items to find within a specified area. Whoever gathers every item on the list and returns to home base first is the winning team.
  
  Classic games like musical chairs, freeze tag and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey never go out of style. Modify them to suit the theme of your event -- play pin-the-tail-on-the-mermaid at a pool or beach party, for example.
  
  

Boxed Games and Card Games

• Teach children to play card games.Jupiterimages/Comstock/Getty Images
  
  Young children like games and activities that provide practice with letters, numbers and colors. Puzzles, Go Fish and matching games challenge young minds. The age-old classic Candyland is an early childhood favorite. As kids get older, they typically enjoy more strategy. Checkers, Connect Four, Mastermind, Clue and Sorry are all board games that test kids' skills in memory, deductive reasoning and identifying patterns.