Not every school holiday day needs a plan, a booking, or a budget. Some of the best holiday moments happen at home — with a roll of tape, some old magazines, paint that's been sitting in the cupboard since last Deepavali, and a child who's been told "you can do whatever you want with this." This guide is for those days. The ones where you don't feel like leaving the house, where the wallet is tired, or where you just want your child quietly engaged for an hour while you drink your kopi in peace.
We run art workshops at Art Journey — so we know what happens when children get access to materials and creative freedom. But we also know that parents can't book a workshop every single day. These 10 ideas use things you likely already own, cost little to nothing, and genuinely work. We've seen parents use them between workshop days to keep the creative momentum going all holiday long.
Fill a shoebox or container with random supplies: old newspapers, stickers, string, cotton balls, bottle caps, rubber bands, fabric scraps, tape, glue, and crayons. Hand it to your child and say: "Make something. Anything." No instructions, no theme, no rules. Walk away. Come back in 45 minutes to discover a "robot," a "house," or something completely unidentifiable but built with intense concentration.
The magic is in the constraint — limited materials force creative problem-solving. This is genuinely how professional designers train, just scaled down to a 5-year-old's level.
Time: 30–60 minutes
Write a different drawing prompt on a piece of paper each morning and leave it at your child's place at the breakfast table. "Draw the weirdest animal you can imagine." "Draw what you'd see if you could fly." "Draw mummy's face from memory." "Draw your dream bedroom." By the end of the holidays, you'll have a stack of drawings that tells a story about what your child was thinking and feeling each day.
For older kids (8+), make it a sketchbook challenge — buy a cheap notebook from Daiso and encourage them to fill one page every day. The habit of drawing daily is more valuable than any single art lesson.
Time: 15–30 minutes per day
Save delivery boxes, shoe boxes, toilet rolls, and cereal boxes for a week before the holidays. Dump them all in the living room with tape, scissors (age-appropriate), markers, and glue. Challenge your child to build something: a city, a spaceship, a castle, a maze for their toy cars. Cardboard construction teaches spatial thinking, planning, and engineering — and the bigger the structure, the longer they stay engaged.
Singapore parents receive enough online delivery boxes in a single week to build a small apartment. Put them to use.
Time: 45 minutes to 2+ hours (some kids will spend an entire afternoon)
Let your child plan and prepare one simple meal or snack entirely by themselves (with supervision). A sandwich, a fruit salad, pancakes from a box mix, or scrambled eggs. They choose the ingredients, do the measuring, and plate it up. The pride of serving something they made to the family is enormous — and they're learning a life skill while you sit at the counter and supervise.
For older kids (8+), escalate the challenge: "You have $8 — plan tomorrow's lunch for the family using only ingredients from the fridge."
Time: 30–60 minutes
Take a notebook and pencil downstairs to your HDB garden, neighbourhood park, or even the void deck. Ask your child to draw three things they see: a leaf, a bug, a flower, a drain cover pattern, a bird. The goal isn't artistic quality — it's observation. Children who learn to really look at the world around them develop stronger visual skills, attention to detail, and a calmer disposition. This works beautifully as a morning activity before the heat kicks in.
If your child enjoyed this, our guide on affordable weekend activities has more ideas that combine nature and creativity.
Time: 20–40 minutes
Gather old magazines, newspapers, flyers, and junk mail. Give your child scissors, glue, and a large sheet of paper. The brief: "Cut out everything you like and arrange it into a picture." Younger children create abstract colour collages. Older kids might make a "vision board" of things they want to do, places they want to visit, or goals for the year. It's meditative, engaging, and produces surprisingly impressive results.
Time: 30–60 minutes
Fold 4–6 sheets of A4 paper in half, staple at the spine, and you have a blank book. Your child writes a story (or dictates it to you) and illustrates each page. It could be an adventure story, a guide to their favourite topic ("My Book About Dinosaurs"), a comic strip, or a journal of their school holiday so far. The combination of writing and drawing builds literacy, narrative thinking, and creative confidence simultaneously.
These make excellent gifts for grandparents — and they're the kind of thing parents find tucked in a drawer years later and treasure.
Time: 45 minutes to several days (some kids turn this into an ongoing project)
Challenge your child to design their own board game from scratch. They'll need to create the board (cardboard or paper), write the rules, design the game pieces (clay, LEGO, or paper cut-outs), and make cards or dice. Then the whole family plays it. This is a powerhouse activity — it teaches design thinking, logic, writing, art, and communication in one project. Fair warning: the rules will be chaotic and the game will be heavily weighted in your child's favour. That's part of the fun.
Time: 1–3 hours (often becomes a multi-day project)
Go for a short walk and collect 5–10 smooth stones. Wash and dry them. Paint them with acrylic paint — animals, patterns, faces, words, or abstract designs. Once dry, your child can display them at home, use them as paperweights, gift them, or hide them around the neighbourhood for other children to find (painted rock hunting is a popular community activity in Singapore).
This is a great gateway activity for children who enjoyed painting at a studio like Art Journey's canvas painting sessions and want to keep creating between visits.
Time: 30–45 minutes (plus drying time)
This one isn't an activity — it's the deliberate absence of one. Let your child be bored. Don't fill the gap. Don't hand them a screen. Just wait. Research consistently shows that boredom is a precursor to creativity — when children have nothing to do, they start inventing things to do. The child who says "I'm bored" at 10am might be building an elaborate LEGO city by 10:30am if you resist the urge to solve the problem for them.
A study referenced by the American Psychological Association found that boredom can spur creativity because it gives the brain space to wander and generate new ideas. In a holiday schedule packed with activities, workshops, and outings, the unstructured hours are just as important as the planned ones.
Time: As long as your patience allows
Prepare a "creative corner" before the holidays start. A shelf, drawer, or box with paper, crayons, glue, scissors, tape, old magazines, and any craft supplies you already own. When your child says "I'm bored," point them there instead of reaching for the iPad.
Set a "create before screen" rule. Before any screen time, your child makes one thing — a drawing, a collage, a cardboard invention. Even 15 minutes of creative effort before switching to screens changes the dynamic of the day. It becomes a habit surprisingly fast.
Alternate home days with outing days. One day at home with DIY creative projects, the next day out — a workshop at Art Journey, a park visit, or a hawker centre adventure. This rhythm prevents both overstimulation and cabin fever.
Lower your expectations of the finished product. A 4-year-old's "robot" will look nothing like a robot. A 6-year-old's "board game" will have contradictory rules. A 3-year-old's "painting" will be a brown smudge. That's all correct. The value is in the doing, not the result.
Join in sometimes. Sit down and make something alongside your child. It doesn't have to be good. The act of creating together — even silently, each working on your own thing — is a form of connection that's different from playing, talking, or watching something together.
The balance that works: Most parents find that a mix of 2–3 home creative days, 1 workshop or outing day, and 1 genuine rest day per week keeps the holidays manageable. You don't need to fill every hour. You just need enough options that "I'm bored" has an answer other than a screen.
For workshop days, check out our complete June holiday activities guide for ideas that complement these home-based ones.
When you've run out of home ideas — or just need an hour to yourself — Art Journey has you covered. Drop your child off for a creative workshop, grab a coffee at the on-site Art Cafe, and let someone else handle the mess for a change.
Book a SessionMost creative activities can be done at home with materials you already have — paper, crayons, cardboard boxes, old magazines, tape, and glue. Drawing challenges, cardboard construction, magazine collages, painted rocks, and writing mini books are all free or very low-cost. Save workshop and outing days for once or twice a week, and fill the remaining days with home-based creativity and free outdoor activities.
The best home activities are open-ended — they give children materials and freedom rather than rigid instructions. An "art box" filled with random supplies, daily drawing prompts, cardboard construction, DIY board games, and writing illustrated mini books all work well. The key is variety: rotate between different types of creative play so your child stays interested across the holiday weeks.
Yes — and it's actually beneficial. Research shows that boredom spurs creativity because it gives the brain space to generate new ideas. Children who are allowed to be bored often invent their own games, projects, and stories. The key is resisting the urge to immediately fill the gap with screen time. Provide access to creative materials (paper, craft supplies, building blocks) and let them figure it out.
One planned activity per day is usually enough. Children need unstructured time just as much as structured activities. A morning creative project followed by free play and an evening family activity is a sustainable rhythm. Overscheduling the holidays leads to exhaustion — for parents and children alike.
A basic home art kit for the holidays doesn't need to be expensive. Paper (A4 and larger), crayons, markers, washable paint, glue stick, tape, scissors (child-safe), old magazines or newspapers for collage, and a few empty cardboard boxes cover most activities. If you want to add one extra item, a pack of air-dry clay from Daiso or Popular opens up a whole new range of projects.
Many parents find that a "create before screen" rule works well: before any screen time, the child completes one creative task — a drawing, a page in their mini book, a cardboard build. Even 15–20 minutes of creative effort before screens changes the day's dynamic. The goal isn't to eliminate screens entirely, but to ensure creative activities get at least equal time.
Many children who say they "don't like drawing" actually just haven't found the right format. Cardboard construction, cooking, DIY board games, painted rocks, and nature journalling are all creative activities that don't feel like traditional "art." If your child has tried these and still prefers physical or digital activities, that's fine too — creativity isn't limited to pencils and paint.