I might be a bit late to the party but I wanted to share with you all a lovely long list of interesting things to do with your little ones whilst your not home-schooling, cooking dinner and surviving another day! Let me know if you do any of them! Tag us on Facebook and Instagram @CommunityContact!
- Watch an online theatre production. Click here!
- Have a virtual tea party with their best friends
- We haven’t done this yet but a few friends have organised sleepovers / camping for their kids in their living room. I’m guessing it can go one way or the other, but at least they don’t have to go far if they can’t get to sleep!
- Invest in some chalk pens for glass to decorate your windows (they can be wiped clean) – these ones are apparently fab!
- Joo Moo Pottery have some fantastic home pottery kits which you can purchase via Facebook. Check out Julie’s page here.
- Home Cinema Trip – make tickets, popcorn cones, and even set up a kiosk with a till to sell things before the show. We even had background cinema music as we entered the cinema. We put our cushions on the floor and brought all of Archie’s favourite toys down to watch the movie too. Archie really loved this. We watched a classic Disney Robin Hood movie!
- Create a restaurant at home – pretend to be a chef in a restaurant, then a waiter, get the kids to design menus and make it a really authentic night. We even chose a new restaurant name! Archie loved this!
- Have you heard about the 30 Day Lego Challenge? We have been doing a lot of these – my husband is extremely creative! I will create a blog post on all of his wonderful creations soon!
- Dressing up box! All kids love dressing up and putting on shows. Encourage them to make tickets, and rehearse for their big moment!
- Get arty! Check out Draw with Rob on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, His website is here: https://www.robbiddulph.com/draw-with-rob
- Make a wish jar – put in a note a day of things you want to do and places you want to visit when the Covid-19 Crisis is over
- Keep happy and active with Joe Wicks every morning at 9am over on his Youtube Channel.
- Check out a list of virtual tours available online here
- Check out Science Sparks which has some great (and fairly simple) science experiments.
- If you can get your hands on some flour, here’s a recipe for salt dough which everyone seems to be talking about at the moment. Make necklaces with it (shape the salt dough into beads before cooking it and then paint them before threading them through) or make a salt dough hand or foot print! Salt dough!
- Make stained glass windows using tissue paper – Start out by cutting some squares out of tissue paper. You can cut any shapes you’d like, really. Even better, let the kids cut out their own tissue paper shapes! Check out this link for more instructions.
- Have a birthday party for a teddy. A friend of ours did this a few weeks ago and we plan to do this soon. Play pass the parcel, bake a cake, blow up balloons and have a celebratory picnic.
- Make a time capsule of things you have done during lockdown – crafts, letters, pictures, thoughts etc
- Make home-made play dough – see recipe here
- Make potato stamps – make lots of shapes – hearts, circles, squares etc.
- Make cakes and cookies!
- Cornflour play! Add water and let your children feel how it is hard but runny! All ages like it and it’s very therapeutic. You can put it in a tray and add cars / animals too.
- We have a box full of toy kitchen food, tea sets and utensils and a kitchen which Archie and now George love playing with as well as a toy cash register. Encourage the kids to set up a shop and get involved buying things from them. You could also get them to write a shopping list…
- Teach your kids how to make pizzas! Get them to decorate them with smiley faces!
- Snuggle up together in a cosy corner (my little ones like to sit in their pop-up tent) and read a favourite storybook. Throw yourself into it and use lots of authentic voices for the characters. You could even use some hand or finger puppets too and set up a tent. If you don’t have time to read, then I can highly recommend David Walliams’ Elevenses audio stories which are free!
- Fill a bottle with 1/3 water and 2/3 oil. Then add a teaspoon of food colouring followed by an alka seltzer tablet and put the lid on. It creates a lava lamp type thing!
- Make a den – throw the cushions off the sofa, use your throw and create a cosy den!
- Make an ice cream shop out of large cardboard boxes. Make Ice creams, decorate the box, you could even make curtains!
- Make your own soft play! My little boy is really missing going to the park and to softplay so we have been taking the cushions off the sofa (again) putting the bean bags down and create various slides and soft play landings!
- Create a sofa mountain! (you guessed it!) take the sofa cushions and create mountains with them! Send them up the mountain wrapped up warm and with a snack! Don’t make the mountain too high of course!
- Use large cardboard boxes to keep the kids entertained – sit them in it and let them decorate the inside with felt tips, build a fort with it, make a dolls-house or a den!
- Cover the dining room table in brown paper and tape it all down. Mess free doodling!
- Continue the rainbow magic! We have seen some lovely pavement chalk drawings and messages on our daily exercise. Get creative and write your own message outside your home too!
- Plant seeds and watch them grow. You could even get the kids to plant some vegetables that they like to eat!