We’re into our third week of COVID-19 lockdown and parents from Birmingham to Barcelona are tearing their hair out trying to juggle home-work and home-schooling. Fortunately, stressed-out parents are sharing some great suggestions for activities both offline and on to keep kids of all ages busy, entertained and learning during lockdown.
Get Creative
Become a movie director and let your home-schooled Ray Harryhausen unleash their imagination. Dream up a storyboard and download a stop motion app so you can act out movie scenes and stories with Lego or other toys and modeling equipment. (For a bonus time-eater, get them to sort and categorize their equipment first.)
Master the ancient art of Origami and create beautiful, dynamic figures. All you need is some paper and a few YouTube tutorials.
Take papercraft one step further with exquisitely detailed Japanese laser-cut paper kits. Beautiful, highly rewarding and, most importantly, very time consuming, these intricate kits make for a great ongoing project. They lend themselves to collaboration but older kids may be able to work autonomously after initial setup and some supervision.
Learn STEM skills. Autodesk’s Tinkercad platform has entry-level tools to learn 3D modeling, electronics and coding (including a Minecraft Modeler!). And if you’re lucky enough to have a 3D printer in the house, you actually get to see the physical results of your labor.
Take it with a pinch of salt by adding some to that old favorite Play-Doh and make decorations, ornaments or figures to act out a favorite story. If you don't already have it at home you can try your hand at making your own.
Get trashed and upcycle unwanted household items into beautiful, useful or decorative pieces for the home (or future gifts). A glue gun and/or other basic craft equipment is good to have. See YouTube for tutorials.
Set a zero-waste creative challenge. If you don’t have a craft kit to hand, give them sticking tape, glue and string plus bits and bobs from the recycling and a basic theme—machines, buildings, vehicles, animals, etc.—and see where their imagination takes them.
Bring out budding Picassos and produce artworks based on the greats. Matisse and Kandinsky lend themselves particularly well to producing colorful riots of paint of collage.
Take lessons from real-life artists and craftspeople. Draw With Rob has some fun tasks, and Red Ted Art has loads of craft ideas for different ages.
Box clever by flattening an old cardboard box and drawing a road or city map on it.
Be a square and do some block printing using Lego bricks. If you don’t fancy taking your chances with ink and the living room rug, try washable paint instead.
Super-size your art by using large sheets of paper or fabric if you have outdoor space. Don’t limit yourselves to brushes either: try using straws, string, sponges, etc. to make your mark.
Draw up a chair and any number of other things from your imagination with these activities from Fatbelly Pots (check the Facebook page for more ideas):
- Scribble Fish: scribble on a piece of paper, find as many fish as you can in it and draw them in, adding as many anatomical details and colors as possible. You can make this into a learning activity by discussing your fishy creations’ characteristics before repeating the task with your new knowledge.
- Torn Paper People: Tear scraps of paper and stick them down in pairs, one big, one small. What kind of people can you see there? What might they be doing? Bring them to life by drawing their bodies and adding 2D or 3D props.
- Splat People. Similar to the above but with paint. Have fun throwing paint at a piece of paper and when it's dry, look for monsters, people or fish and draw them into the splats. Can you make them interact with each other in some way? Older kids can take it one step further and try to position their splats with an image already in mind.
- Draw Their Drawings. Ask them to draw something then copy it yourself. Then they copy your copy, you copy their copy and so on ad infinitum, adding bits to it if you want. Great to build confidence in their artistic abilities.
For more ideas and to display your creations, look for the hashtags #debalconabalcon #yomequedoencasa, #arcoiris and #desdemiventana.
Never Stop Exploring
Take a virtual tour of some of the worlds’ best museums and galleries, stand on the Great Wall of China or go where no child has gone before and explore the surface of Mars, among many other virtual destinations.
Keep Calm and Kick Ass
Practice Yoga, Mindfulness and mediation with Cosmic Kids Yoga.
Kick start your day doing PE With Joe.
Put Words in Their Mouth
Learn a language together. If English isn’t your kids’ first language, FunTalk has some good tips to up their exposure outside the classroom (which should also work for other languages, but just make sure you know how to change the video games console, etc. back to a language you understand afterward).
Make Sweet Music (Well, Music)
Raise a toast to jam sessions and let off steam by bashing away together on whatever instruments you have in the house. (Just this once, your neighbors are likely to understand.) If you don’t have any instruments there are, of course, any number of music-making apps.)
Miscellaneous Merriment and Mayhem
Increase screentime (that’s right, I said increase). The people at Hubbub Labs have put together a list of the top 7 platforms to keep kids occupied while you get on with some work, featuring everything from NASA Kids to exercise to art activities.
Make a song and dance out of it by acting out stories or songs, or creating dance routines or a circus act.
Keep it clean as you get messy. If you’ve got a terrace or a bathtub, water is an eternal favorite, especially teamed with bubbles, measuring cups, sieves and toys. Kill two birds with one stone and get them to help keep things clean and safe by bathing their toys.
Make them work for you. Set older kids the challenge of creating a treasure trail for the younger ones to follow.
Set ‘em up and knock ‘em down with a domino-style chain reaction around the home using any (hardy) equipment you can find.
Make a meal of it by getting them to help you make the food (not to mention laying the table and clearing away). Yes, it’s going to take longer, but you’ve got to do it anyway, right? As well as regular meals, fall back on that old favorite baking, or try making messy-but-fun pizza dough or something new, like making fresh pasta.
And If All the above Wasn’t Enough
Chatterpack has a huge list of online resources, including virtual visits, education, culture, games, mental health, history and more. There’s also a downloadable ADHD resource for a small fee.
Art educator Ella Medley Whitfield has (mostly offline) activities suitable for very young kids including letter writing, snack making, shadow play and more.
Kate Williams.
Kate Williams is a freelance writer, editor, translator and Director of The Writer Stuff. She left her native England for Barcelona in 2003 and never looked, or went, back. When she isn’t writing or discovering all the cool stuff going on in the city, she enjoys hiking in the Catalan countryside, kayaking on the Costa Brava, and volunteers at a local animal sanctuary. You can read more by Kate here.