Keep the family busy with these creative kids competitions!

Are you stuck with bored children at home? Creative kids competitions are a great way to keep them busy – but will also put their brains to work. Here’s a few fun kids competitions they might like to try… don’t forget to check the comments too as you’ll find more comps there!

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NEW! Win a £50 Iceland voucher

Under 16s can create a wildflower crown to celebrate the coronation, and the best one will win a £50 Iceland voucher and Eden Project water bottle. Email up to three photos per child along with the child’s full name, age, postal address to communities@edenproject.com. Find out more at www.edenprojectcommunities.com – closing date is 23 April 2023.

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Win a trip to Kerala

The third International Children’s painting competition 2023 is open worldwide and has prizes of 18 five-night trips to Kerala, plus 70 runners up prizes! Entrants should be age 4 to 16 (born between 01.01.2007 and 01.01.2019). The theme of the competition is ‘Kerala Village Life’ and children can use crayons, coloured pencils, paints or sketch pens and submit up to five entries. You can register now at keralatourism.org/contest/icpc (my referral link) but can’t upload artwork until 1 April 2023. Prizes are split between entrants from India, Kerala, and the rest of the world (find out more on the Prizes page)

T&Cs are here. Closing date is 30 September 2023.

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Win Amazon vouchers & books

7-18 year olds are invited to enter the Humanimal Trust Creative Awards 2023, and create a piece of visual art or written work to celebrate the connections between all species.

Entries will be split into age four groups, 7-11 years, 12-14 years, 15-16 years, 17-18 years, at the time of closing date. Entries will be judged on how original the creation is, relevance to the theme of Connectivity and/or One Medicine, and the use of story writing, poetic, artistic, photographic or videographic techniques. There will be three prize winners in each age category – top prize winners in the two oldest categories will win a £250 Amazon voucher, in the two younger categories it’s a basket of books from ‘What on Earth Publishing’, plus all winners get various books and a certificate.

Find all the details at humanimaltrust.org.uk. The closing date is 31 March 2023.

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Win £5,000 for your school library

For the third year running, The Royal Mint are holding their annual short story competition for Primary school pupils aged 8 to 11. Children must submit a story of no more than 500 words on the theme of Crossing Continents. The winner will receive 1 x silver commemorative coin and a framed copy of their winning entry, illustrated by a professional Illustrator. The winner’s school will receive an award of £5,000 worth of vouchers for equipment and books to invest in their library. If the winner is home schooled, then prize will be donated to a public library. Four ‘runners-up’ entries will each receive 1 x silver commemorative coin and the five ‘highly commended’ will each receive 1 x base metal commemorative coin.

Find all the details on the Royal Mint website, and check out the T&Cs here. The closing date is 31 March 2023.

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Win National Book Tokens

National Book Tokens’ Design a National Book Token competition encourages children of all ages to share their creativity – and their love for books and reading – by designing their own fabulous gift cards! A panel of judges will select a winner and runner-up in each of three age categories: up to 8 years, 9-12 years and 13-16 years.  The theme of the competition is ‘Choosing to read’ and you can download the template here.

FIRST PRIZE in each age range wins £350/€380 National Book Tokens for the school, £100/€110 National Book Tokens for the pupil. SECOND PRIZE in each age range wins £200/€220 National Book Tokens for the school and £50 /€60 National Book Tokens for the pupil. All the National Book Tokens prizes will feature the winning designs! ONE OVERALL WINNER (chosen from the three first prize winners) will get a £10/€10 gift card in their design for every child in their class*, and the opportunity for their class to visit a real bookshop, virtually or in person, to spend their National Book Tokens.

Find out more at worldbookday.com/competition/design-a-nbt/ – closing date is 2 April 2023.

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I regularly recommend www.toppsta.com as a fabulous place to win kids books, and you have a better chance of winning if you add reviews to your child’s account. Ask your children which books they’ve read recently – older kids will be fine to type up their own reviews, but for younger children you could ask them questions about the books and then type up the review yourself based on their answers. Help them expand their vocabulary and ask them to think of different adjectives – exciting, thrilling, fascinating, etc. – to describe the story and characters. Try asking Google or Alexa for synonyms!

Find out more about kids book competitions in my blog post Competitions for bookworms. 

Other comping fun for kids

• If you don’t mind giving them a phone or tablet, set the kids to work on some instant wins! My son Ryland loves playing ‘spin to win’ free instant wins online – check my list of instant wins for the latest comps! 
• If your child loves to write, there’s a great list of current UK writing competitions on the School Reading List website – which also includes public speaking competitions too.
• Moma.co.uk lists some nice arty kids competitions! 

Do you have any more tips for keeping the kids busy comping while they’re stuck at home? Let me know in the comments.