When your kids are at home – because it’s vacation time and school’s out, their friends are unavailable, or whatever other reason – you may have to keep them busy or provide entertainment of some kind. You don’t need to get the car out and go somewhere, necessarily. There are plenty of fun, educational, and meaningful activities for them to enjoy indoors without having to leave home.
As a bonus, some of these activities require only a light amount of parental supervision and can also boost their general development. Below are some handpicked examples presented by child psychologist Dr. Stephanie Satariano.
Arts and Crafts
As Tinybeans can tell you, pursuing arts and crafts is not only fun but also provides significant benefits like boosted critical thinking, better cognitive development, extra creativity and productivity, and finer expression. Here are some things that are especially enriching and enjoyable:
● Playdough modelling: Playdough is modelling clay your kids can make into various shapes – their imagination is the only limit. It keeps their hands busy and the clay is non-toxic and reusable.
● Drawing: This is a classic that almost all kids love. You can make it extra interesting by offering creative art projects or challenges – family doodles, creative drawing prompts, and observational drawings.
● Construction: There’s little more rewarding than building something beautiful from scratch. Some great examples are magnet tiles, house of cards, cardboard building toys, pillow forts, and lego-buildings.
● Sewing: Sewing makes your children more precise and helps hone their fine motor skills. Even kids as young as 4 years can learn how to sew. You can teach your kids how to sew colourful patterns or entire items of clothing (eventually).
Science experiments
Science experiments can be fun and, needless to say, also teach your child something at the same time. They could optionally take their projects to school, too. A few examples include a homemade lava lamp, the black pepper surface tension experiment, elephant toothpaste, and homemade slime.
Cooking
Cooking is an essential life skill. It can also be enjoyable, something you do together as a family unit. You can start by teaching your child some basic tasks – stirring batter, rinsing vegetables, rolling bread, and mashing potatoes. You can, eventually, move into asking them to prepare full-fledged dishes on their own. Some easy foods young children can make are toast, sandwiches, eggs, salad, and mac and cheese.
Performing (and writing) a play
Plays fire the imagination, get the creative juices flowing, and can do great things for your child’s confidence levels and socialization skills. To make it a bigger learning experience, you can encourage them to come up with their own play or skit. Then, you can help them to put it into production, which may involve teaching them acting.
Planting an indoor garden
Gardening is a therapeutic, stress-busting activity. It will teach your kids how to be practical, give them information about plants, and how getting their hands dirty can be rewarding. You can have a garden indoors on your balcony. Also, you can create an indoor “garden” by getting potted plants and placing them around your living room, kitchen, or bedroom. Your kids can help you pick out the plants and also take care of them.
Creating an imaginary small business
If your child has an entrepreneurial streak or likes the idea of running their own business, you can help them make one. They’ll learn to tap into their creativity and also pick up skills that will help them later – and maybe even start their own business when they grow up. They can use free online tools to make their start-up. For example, they can use an online label maker to create attractive, attention-grabbing brand labels for their unique products. It’s possible to use templates and customize them to fit the brand. Some fun business ideas for kids are a mini-restaurant, a clothing store, and an art gallery.
Working from home? Some suggestions
When you’re working from home, you can’t have your kids constantly interrupt you. You can get around this by strategically planning out a schedule of interesting activities for them – things that they’d especially enjoy and aren’t normally allowed to engage in when you’re not working. For instance, you could permit them to watch TV, be on the computer, and use a tablet. You can make sure they consume educational content. They’ll be unlikely to interrupt you when you’re working if they love what they’re doing.
Conclusion
Kids can go stir crazy indoors if they run out of things to do, as you doubtless know. So, planning a smart strategy and making a list of indoor activities will be worth your time. With a nice, long list, you’ll always be able to give your kids something to do, keep them entertained (and educated), and free up some breathing room for yourself.
Thanks to - Lacey Conner from familywellnesspro.com for contributing this brilliant article!
Image via Unsplash
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