21 Fun Activities Parents Can Do With Their 6-Year-Old

Children of all ages need entertainment and bonding time and 6-year-olds aren’t any different. You, as a parent, might be wondering what you should do to entertain your 6-year-old. What’s more, you might be wondering what you can do with your 6-year-old that will allow you to bond with them.

Fortunately, both children and parents can enjoy dozens of activities immensely, whether it’s a family-friendly excursion or an excellent, quiet time at home. Let’s look at some fun options that will please both you and your child and allow for some excellent parent-child bonding time.

1. Do this Workout Video With Them!

When my kids were six, they LOVED doing workout videos with me and mom. They would see us exercising in the morning and thought it was fun to do together. It gets them active and they can learn coordination.

Our favorite workout videos for the kids are from Shaun T, who does the Insanity DVDs. It’s fun. Give it a shot and I promise it’ll at least be good for a laugh with your 6-year-old.

2. Visit the Aquarium or a Zoo

What child doesn’t love a trip to the local zoo? A zoo is a place that can prove both fun and educational for everybody no matter what their age. Point out the animals to them and help them learn the sounds and names.

It’s the perfect setting for both learning and fun. It will likely take an entire day, but if you plan well, that won’t be a problem. Plus, it’s a pretty good way to guarantee that your kiddos will get plenty of sleep that night!

Like the zoo, an aquarium can be both a fun and an enlightening experience. You can take a few hours and head to the aquarium for a day of fun with your kids. Some aquariums have what you might call “interactive” displays. You can feed and pet stingrays, watch seal and penguin shows, and more. This will prove a great experience for both you and your 6-year-old.

3. Walk to the Park

Exploring nature should be one of the top things you do with your child, so go to the park often. It’s a great way to get exercise and an incredibly healthy way to spend a day. Playing at the park can be very engaging, plus it’ll give everybody a good hour or two of activity. If the weather permits, you could spend an entire afternoon there.

4. Go on a Scavenger Hunt

If you’d like something a little more interactive to do outside, setting up a scavenger hunt for your child might just be the answer. Make up a list of things (such as pine cones, daffodils, etc.) and help your child keep their eyes open for each of them. This is not only fun but can be a great way to acquaint your child with nature as well.

5. Build a Fort

This is not an outdoor activity, but building a fort is a fantastic way to interact with your child. Once it is completed, a fort can be used for just about anything. You can have a slumber party in it, have a late-night snack, or else have it serve as an evil lair for the villain in your next game.

6. Spend Time Playing

And speaking of games, sometimes it’s nice for your child if you could find it in you to spend an hour simply playing make-believe with them. All you have to do is flex your imagination a little. This experience can and will prove to be pretty fun for your little one. You will probably end up enjoying yourself a bit more than you thought!

7. Draw Some Pictures

Naturally, you need activities for rainy days as well as sunny ones. It can be difficult to entertain your kids (especially the young ones) when they’re stuck inside all day long. After they’ve run around for a little while, try sitting down at the table with them and breaking out the pencils, crayons, and markers.

6-year-old children can draw easily enough on their own. However, if you’re looking for a chance to bond with your child, sit and draw with them! You can compare drawings and maybe even teach them a technique or two.

8. Shadow Puppet Night

During the winter especially, the sun goes down early leaving you with a few extra hours before the kids need to be put to bed. One of these nights, you can shut all the lights off and turn on a flashlight and perform a shadow puppet show. This is a fun activity that can involve everybody. You can tell a story with these shadow puppets or just have fun and get inventive.

9. Catch Some Caterpillars

Most young kids love to hunt for bugs at one point or another in their lifetime. Go outside and help your kids look for and capture a few caterpillars. Buy a pop-up cage and watch as the caterpillars slowly go through the transformation process and turn into butterflies. Teach your child about the process as they watch it take place day by day.

This is an activity that will provide enjoyment and learning for several weeks. You will have to take great care to provide them with the proper environment in which to grow and thrive. Once they’ve gone through a metamorphosis, you and your child will have the fun opportunity to release them and watch them fly away.

10. Visit a Petting Zoo, Local Farm, or Pet Store

New life is always a major point of fascination for people, especially young children. Since this is the case, why not take a trip to the nearest petting zoo, or perhaps a local farm. Pet stores will also often let customers interact with the animals under supervision.

During the spring, farm and lawn supply stores often have a fairly large supply of bunnies and chicks that they allow customers to handle. Whether you’re six years old or an adult, you can’t possibly say that you don’t enjoy holding baby chicks and bunnies.

11. Quiet Time and Reading

Occasionally, some of the best bonding occurs underneath a warm blanket and over a fun book. Little kids need cuddle time with their parents, and storytime is quite possibly one of the most ideal times for this. Reading stories with your child is also a good way to settle them down before bedtime if you need it.

12. Go On a Bike Ride

6 years old is one of the prime times to learn how to ride a bike properly. Bike rides can be a great way for you and your child to get out and about together. You may have to go considerably slower than you might otherwise (especially if bike riding is still new to your child) but it can prove to be lots of fun. Plus, it’s a great way to get exercise.

Even if you can’t go for a full-on bike ride, you can still have fun teaching your child to ride. This is one of the most common parent-child activities out there and it’s a great way for the two of you to bond. Be patient with your child because they will need to learn at their own speed. They might be a little older before they master the art, but the process will still be enjoyable!

13. Get Crafty

We have already talked about drawing and coloring, but just about any kind of craft is a fun activity to do with your 6-year-old. Crafting, whether you’re drawing, painting, sculpting, or sewing, is an avenue through which children can exercise their creativity.

Help your child sculpt a figurine out of macaroni noodles or perhaps fold an origami figure. Let their imagination take hold, and let yours do the same! sOften, popsicle sticks make for great building materials, and they can be purchased in the crafting section of many stores for cheap.

14. Visit a Museum

Excursions are healthy now and then, so why not take a trip to a museum? Now, you might be thinking that a museum will do nothing but bore your children. However, if you visit the right kind of museum, the experience will be a blast. Natural history museums, dinosaur museums, and children’s discovery museums are all excellent choices for this kind of thing. Your child could spend hours at one of these places just exploring and broadening their mind.

15. Baking and Cooking

Baking and cooking are not activities that your 6-year-old should undertake on their own. Try making your child a sous chef for a day and see how it goes! Have them help you bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies or perhaps they could assist in dinner preparation that night.

Though it might seem like work to you, children of that age deeply enjoy feeling helpful and useful. They enjoy doing “grownup” things and cooking can be one of those fun things. Letting them help you with your cooking for the day could wind up making it more enjoyable for you as well.

16. Break Out the Playdough

Generally, playing with playdough isn’t an activity that requires a ton of supervision. However, it might be fun for both you and your child if you’d sit and play playdough with them for an hour or two during the afternoon. Playdough is, of course, a fun activity for people of all ages.

If you’d like to shake things up a bit, consider making some playdough from scratch! Most playdough recipes are incredibly simple and doing this can only add to the fun of the activity. Make a batch of playdough in several fun colors and spend some time playing around with it.

17. Gardening

As mentioned before, young children love to get involved and help with “adult” things. Just as with cooking, you could start involving your child in your outdoor work, gardening specifically. If you have a vegetable garden on your property, consider having your child help you harvest the vegetables and pick out the weeds every once in a while.

If you’re so inclined, you could even give your child a small plot in which to grow whatever they like. When I was about six years old, my mom set aside a tiny plot of soil where I could grow a few flowers. It was a lot of fun! You’ll have to help them keep it up, of course, but they’ll love the feeling of independence it gives them.

18. Go Swimming

When it gets too hot to just sit comfortably outside, it might be time to go swimming. Every kid is different, but most little ones at the age of six tend to greatly enjoy splashing around in the water. You can either head to a local neighborhood pool or waterpark or simply set up a kiddie pool and slip n’ slide in your front yard. Either way, it will be fun, all the while providing you with a quick way to cool off

19. Go On a Picnic

Everybody gets the feeling every once in a while that they’ve been cooped up in the house for far too long. 6-year-olds tend to feel this keenly. So, if you’ve got lunch made or even if you want to go out and grab something, consider taking a picnic blanket with you and going out to the park for a quick picnic. This will provide a break from distractions and give you a good chance to spend some quality time with your child.

20. Play Hide and Seek

Hide and seek is an easy game to play with children of all ages. 6-year-olds may not be champions at hiding, but that doesn’t mean they won’t sincerely enjoy the game. It’s fun to get your siblings in on it, but when mom and dad play, it’s even better. So, spend a little while playing hide and seek with your child. It just might make their day!

The nice thing about hide and seek is that it can be played just about anywhere. You can be at a park, at home, on a playground, wherever! Play it while you’re on your picnic or even in your backyard (or inside, if that’s more convenient).

21. Projector Movies

Summer is the prime time for outdoor activities. This means you can take your movies outside too! Little kids earnestly enjoy special events and excursions, so if you let them stay up late one night to watch a projector movie out in the yard, it will make their week.

Set up some chairs and maybe even a comfy place to lay down on the lawn. Pop some popcorn and buy a couple of your favorite movie treats and you’ll be all set. Make sure to wear bug repellent!