Circus Activities to Enjoy at Home
Need another idea on how to vacation at home during COVID-19? What child, or adult for that matter, doesn’t love going to the circus!? Well here are some fun circus activities for kids and toddlers to enjoy at home! Plus, check out my other two posts (Camping Day and Beach Day) for even more ideas.
This circus-themed day took a little preparation from me because I made a lot of the games myself to save money. Who loves re-purposing Amazon boxes? This girl does! Keep reading to see how my family enjoyed these circus activities for kids and toddlers at home. We had to break up circus day into a weekend because toddlers know best, and sometimes they make their own schedules. 
Here is a basic and detailed schedule for you to print and follow along with our day if you are interested. If yes, click here.
*This post may contain affiliate links to products. Using these links, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. For more information, click here.
What Activities did we Do at the Circus?
Played various circus games: You’ll see that there are several games listed in this section because the majority of these games won’t last more than 10 minutes or so.
- Squirt water gun to knock off whiffle balls
- Stick golf tees in foam block (the Dollar Tree was out of blocks so I grabbed a foam circle instead-see below). Place whiffle balls or ping pong balls on top of golf tees. Squirt the balls with the water gun.
- *I recommend getting a small water gun if your child is a toddler. Test the trigger at the store to see if it is loose, this is preferred. I make these recommendations because toddler fingers aren’t strong yet so isolating the index finger then pulling the trigger will be tricky. Initially your child may need some hand over hand assistance if he/she has not had exposure to this activity before.
- Face Painting: Here is a great tutorial about face painting for beginners (that is me!) with some cute designs.
- Ring Toss: Two options
- 1. If you have a baby ring then use this:
- 2. Make your own out of a paper towel roll.
- Play in a ball pit: We do not have a Kiddey Ball Pit Play Tent but my daughter has played in this one at a friend’s house. It also stores nicely in a small bag.
- Knock over cups: Stack paper or plastic cups and throw a ball at them to knock them over.
- Play with bubbles outside: This is one of my daughter’s favorite things to do!
- Draw circus animals with sidewalk chalk: Because toddlers aren’t skilled with writing or drawing skills just yet, my daughter obviously did not draw animals. She ended up drawing lines and scribbles and used her imagination to create her own animals. This was great for imaginative play!
- Crawl through a flaming hula hoop: Unfortunately we did not get to do this activity because every time I went to the store (both Dollar Tree and grocery store) they were out of hula hoops. My idea was to tie orange, red and yellow crepe paper around the hoop to look like fire. Make an obstacle course in your living room or outside with part of the course being to crawl through it.
- Walk on tight rope: Cut a pool noodle in half and place flat side down. I bought this at the Dollar Tree so I didn’t feel guilty cutting up an expensive pool noodle. I tried to hold her hand but my toddler is extremely “independent” so I placed it close to the wall so she could hold on. If you are placing the noodle on a slick surface such as laminate, hardwood, or tile then I recommend putting non-slip grip under it to avoid sliding.
- Bean Bag Toss: Two options:
- 1. Buy a bean bag toss game
- Collapsible Portable Game Board with Tic Tac Toe
- Collapsible Portable Game Board with Tic Tac Toe
- 1. Buy a bean bag toss game
-
- 2. Make your own! We didn’t already own a bean bag toss or bean bags so I made what we had at home work. I used an Amazon box to make the base and we used rolled up socks for bean bags.
See step-by-step directions on how to make your very own bean bag toss game here.
- Stilt Walking: Turn coffee cans into stilts. As you will see in the picture below we actually used cans of fire roasted tomatoes because we didn’t have two coffee cans. This activity did not go as planned for a 2-year-old! My daughter was too scared and we had to stop. However, I do think coffee cans would have provided her more stability so she wouldn’t have been as scared. I bet an older kid would love this activity!
- Make Paper Plate Animal Faces: Here is a cute blog post about creating many different animals masks.
- “Feed the elephant”: Grab any stuffed animal (it does not have to be an elephant) and “feed” the animal some sort of snack. For example, feed an elephant peanuts, a monkey bananas, a tiger fish, you get the idea. Also, when I say peanuts or bananas, I mean pretend play food. My daughter has a stuffed animal monkey and a banana in her pretend play food set so she can pretend to feed the monkey. However, she does not have pretend peanuts so instead we used noodles I already had in the pantry.
- Modify this activity to make it a little more challenging using tweezers!
- Modify this activity to make it a little more challenging using tweezers!
4. Adapt activity even further to feeding elephant/monkey with hands
Check out this printable that goes into further detail with the “Feed the Elephant” section.
- Color
- Get in some more gross motor play doing Yoga: Pink Oatmeal has these “circus-themed” cards with yoga poses
Developmental Skills Targeted:
- Cognitive Development: Imaginary play, cognitive flexibility, sustained attention, information processing speed
- Social and Emotional Development: expresses, listens and pays attention
- Sensory Integration
- Motor planning and Coordination
- Fine motor skills:
- Academic- pencil skills
- Play- construction
- Strengthening
- Gross motor skills:
- Locomotor- running, jumping
- Object control- throwing, catching
What did we eat?
We actually did not eat everything listed below because as you can see, there is a lot of yummy junk food. Of course I let my daughter eat more sugar today than typical since it was a special occasion, but most listed are just ideas for you and your family.
- Animal crackers
- Popcorn
- Snow cones
- Peanuts
- Pretzels
- Cotton candy
- Marshmallow dumbbells:
- Cut a plastic straw in two.
- Heat chocolate almond bark on the stove.
- While almond bark is heating, stick a marshmallow on both ends of the straw.
- Dip and roll marshmallow in almond bark. Do this quickly so the marshmallow doesn’t melt.
Ideas of what to read:
Ideas of what to watch:
- Dumbo
- Madagascar 3
- The Greatest Showman
What to wear:
- My daughter wore a patriotic themed outfit with stars and stripes. She made a clown collar out of a paper plate and wore an old party hat we already had. I finished the outfit by placing a red sticker on her nose. She thought the sticker was funny, but the clown accessories didn’t last long. They were still cute while they lasted.
- Other ideas:
- top hat and tailcoat or cape for ringmaster
- dress up like a circus animal or sport your paper plate animal mask
- dress up like an acrobat or circus performer
- sport your painted face
As mentioned above, we had to break this themed day into two because I overprepared activities. A lot of these games aren’t meant to be played for long periods of time, but I’m glad I had too much material instead of not enough. We just got to look forward to enjoying “Circus Day” a second day. Weeks later my daughter will still play with the ring toss and bean bag toss I made. I hope your family enjoyed these circus activities for kids and toddlers as much as we did!
Great job Kristin! Good content!
Thank you Ryan!
These are such creative ideas! I love how they each involve development and creativity. They have “OT Mom” written all over them!
Thank you Stephanie!
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