55+ Key Activities to Keep Your Little Ones Engaged

A key that is a common and essential item at home 🏡 that you use often and every day can be used for various activities for your kids to try at home.

If you’re wondering what can be done with a key, you’re at the right place 💯, as I have a few fun and engaging ideas that you can make your kids do.

Interesting Key Activities for Your Kids

These key activities can help your kids stay engaged while also improving their fine motor skills and cognitive skills to match the shapes and sizes of the keys.

Your kids will have a great time doing these activities that are all based on the simple household – the key 🔐 that is a part of our lives.

In this blog post, I have made a list of activities that can be done with a key for your kids to try at home and have a good time with. 😁

Key Pairing

My son enjoyed doing this activity, and it is a simple way to teach your kids how to sort and identify items that look similar. 

You can place a few different types of keys along with their duplicate pairs in a bowl. Let your kids try to sort the keys and pair the original keys with their duplicate keys as a fun activity. 

I sometimes set a timer ⏱️ to help my son challenge himself and try to sort and match the pairs of keys more efficiently.

Key Sensory Bin

Sensory bins are a constant in my house, as my kids love interacting with and engaging in sensory play, which is essential to nurture their senses.

You can make a sensory bin 📤 at home easily – fill a bin or tray with a dry sensory material of your choice, like rice, salt, sand, beans, pompoms, etc., and add a bunch of keys along with a few toys and playthings for your kids to run their hands 🙌🏼 through the different textures of the sensory bin.

Key Chain Craft

As my son would say – we need some key chains for the keys! And I agree with him, as I somehow love the idea of adding a key chain for each of my keys.

I recommend that you make keychains at home with beads, cardboard, craft paper, etc., as a craft activity with your kids and add a personal touch by displaying their art through your keys. 

You can thread beads in various patterns to a piece of thick string 🧵, tie the loose end into a knot, and loop the other end through a keyring to make beaded 📿 keychains. 

Pro Tip:

I found some alphabet beads at a craft store, and my son and I made a keychain using beads with the letters of his name for his room key.

Key Object Tracing 

I recommend you make your kids trace around the shapes of keys.

You can give your kids various keys in different shapes and sizes, along with a pencil ✏️ and paper. Now, get them to trace ✍🏼 along the shapes of the key 🔑 using the pencil to create an entire page of key-shaped outlines.

I would say that this activity can help your kids practice their pre-writing skills, improve their fine motor skills, and build a foundation for writing and drawing as they control the pencil while tracing around the object. 

Key Outline Coloring 

My son loves taking his crayons 🖍️ and colored pencils and completing coloring sheets as a pastime to relax and enjoy.

You can print or draw outlines of keys in different shapes and sizes with various key designs – vintage 🗝️ and modern 🔑, for your kids to color and decorate them using their creativity and their imagination 💭 .

I draw the unique key outlines by taking inspiration from Google for my son to color and decorate with patterns and colors of his choice, and you can try the same, too.

Key Outline Drawing

After your kids have colored their key outlines, you can do another variation of an art activity where they can draw ✍🏼 the keys by themselves.

You can give your kids an art prompt to draw various kinds of keys in different sizes and shapes on a sheet of paper with their creativity and imagination, and they can use references to build their ideas.

I encouraged my son to draw key outlines that were different, and this helped him to come up with many ideas 💡 of how keys could be designed.

Pro Tip:

After they draw the key outlines, you can also ask them to color inside the key outlines as a coloring activity. 

Key Outline Matching

This key-matching activity is a fun game for your little ones to pair the key with its outline shape.

On a sheet of paper, trace the outline of keys that you have in various sizes and shapes. You can make your kids color inside the outlines of the traced shapes of the keys with a black marker. 

Now, for the fun part, you can put the keys in a bowl and make your kids correctly match the key 🔑 with its outline shape and place it over the traced and colored outlines on the paper.

Key Playdough Imprints

Playdough is one of my son’s favorite things to play with, and he spends endless hours shaping and molding it as a pastime.

You can give your kids a box of play dough and make them roll it into flat sheets cut into circles with considerable thickness. 

Then, kids can gently press keys 🗝️ of different sizes and shapes into the flattened playdough and slowly remove them after a few seconds to create key-shaped imprints.

Key Playdough Writing Practice

If your kids love playing with play dough as much as my son does, you can also include it for writing exercises for kids to do with a key.

You can give your kids a box of play dough and make them roll it into a flat sheet with considerable thickness. Now, your kids can use the teeth of the key to practice pre-writing exercises 〰️, letters 🔡, and numbers 🔢. 

I would say that this is a great and engaging way for them to practice on another medium – playdough in this case, other than the usual pencil and paper practice.

Pro Tip:

You can help your kids roll the clay into a flat sheet to serve as a writing pad, as your kids might find it a bit difficult to repeat the same thing too many times after the space to write is filled.

Key and Lock Unlocking

You can demonstrate to your kids how to unlock a padlock 🔓 with keys. Then, get them to practice unlocking different padlocks that you have at home 🏡 for them to practice with.

This activity may seem difficult for your kids in the beginning, but they can improve with practice and patience.

I believe that this simple activity can teach your kids the importance of safety and security, and they also learn to have the patience to master it.

Key and Lock Dots Matching

This is a simple activity for kids to match the dots ⚫️ with their numbers.

You can label the padlocks with various numbers and attach name tags 🏷️ keychains with the corresponding number of dots written on them.

Kids can match the numbers on the padlocks to unlock them with the dots on the name tag keys as a one-to-one correspondence counting.

Key and Lock Number Sense Matching

I found that my son was able to understand the concept of number sense, where one number could be represented in many ways, better with this lock and key activity.

Steps to do:

• You can buy a few sets of padlocks 🔒 with their keys 🔑, preferably with two to three duplicate keys for your kids to do this number activity.
• Then, label the padlocks with various numbers.
• On the name tag keychains, represent the number in various ways – dots, words, Roman numerals, pictures, etc., and attach the name tag 🏷️ keychains to the keys.
• Kids can find the number sense name tag keys that match the number on the padlocks to learn number 🔢 sense representation.

Key and Lock Arithmetic Matching

After your kids have tried the number sense matching activity, you can try the same with arithmetic operations – addition and subtractions.

You can label the padlocks with various numbers. Then, write down addition ➕ and subtraction ➖ equations, which point to the labeled number as the answer 🟰 on the name tag key chains attached to the keys. 

For example – 

The padlock labeled six will have the keys 6 + 0, 3 + 3, and 8 – 2.

As a fun arithmetic activity, your kids can work out the different equations and find the padlocks that match the answers.

Key and Lock Color Matching

This is a fun activity to teach your kids about colors 🎨 and present them with an opportunity to match them.

You can buy a few sets of colored padlocks 🔐 with their keys and let your kids open the locks by matching the colors. Kids can say the names of the colors and even spell them as they unlock the padlocks.

I would recommend this activity of matching colors for little ones who are starting to learn and identify colors.

Key and Lock Connecting Maze 

This is a simple game for your kids to play, which makes them think of ways to complete the maze successfully.

You can print a template 📑 of a maze on a sheet of paper with a key 🗝️ at the start point and a lock 🔒 at the finish line. 

Kids can try to complete the maze by tracing a line through the maze with their pencils ✏️ to connect the key to the lock.

Conclusion 

These activities, which were done with a key, were so much fun 🤩 for my son to do, and he enjoyed doing them, much to my delight.

You can get your kids to try these activities to keep them entertained and also provide them a chance to have fun.

I hope you enjoyed reading this list of key-related activities that your kids can try and that you found some ideas 📝 to take away from this article.

Please let me know in the comments if you have any more activity ideas with a key to add or any questions for me to answer – I would love to hear your feedback! 😊