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After half of a year of remote work in a house full of kids, you probably already ran out of fresh ideas for kid-friendly activities at home and developed hatred toward Baby Shark. But sometimes, finding something new requires looking closely at things you do daily.
Make sure you choose indoor activities for kids that allow you to spend more time together. Leaving them alone with games or a non-stopping cartoon playlist will not make fun memories for them. You want to find something that will bring you their smiles and laughter every day, and those can be achieved even during weekend house cleaning.
Thinking about what to do indoors with your little one, remember what you love doing or have always wanted to do yourself, and get your kid on board!
Bake Some Cookies
It may take a little longer than usual to make cookies together, but the family tea party will be unforgettable. Find a simple recipe online and adapt it according to kids’ tastes or create your own! Prepare the ingredients together and delegate tasks kids can handle: slicing, mixing, rolling out the dough, using cookie-cutters, and so on. Since they will be able to create cookies according to their own designs – isn’t it another kind of craft?
It is also an excellent opportunity to get to know their tastes better and use the best quality ingredients to make your baked goods healthier than the store-bought ones. For example, you can add unsweetened chocolate chips to the world-famous chocolate cookies (they are perfect for hot chocolate, too!) to lower sugar intake.
The kitchen is the place where you will always find something that needs to be done. Cooking together may become one of the family activities that will make this process easier for you, keep your kids entertained and allow you altogether to make the most fun out of it!
Do Yoga Together
There is no doubt that morning exercises are good for health and boost your mood for the day, but encouraging your kids to do it may become a challenging activity itself. Yoga is another matter!
Start with simpler positions, slightly increasing the difficulty level with each workout so neither you nor your kids will get bored. Joint sports activities, especially yoga, bring parents and children very close together – use this opportunity to enjoy your stay at home.
The kids will be happy to repeat slow movement after you. Also, exercises will help disperse blood, which is useful when staying in a limited space for a long time. Yoga also relaxes and strengthens the nervous system so kids can become less capricious!
Find a suitable online program on YouTube, learn the asanas, and become a trainer for your kids, or let them teach you! Do not forget that yoga classes are safe only when you do everything slowly and use a mat. You can also look for yoga mats created for kids to let the professional equipment motivate them to continue doing yoga classes with you.
It’s Time for Soap Making!
It may be the most unobvious of the science experiments, but probably the most relevant one for the lockdown. Besides, this unusual activity will make your kids feel like real alchemists. There are many sets for soap making online, but you can look for a simple recipe with the same success.
It is suitable for both toddlers and older kids because the process is easy and fun! The creativity here is in its purest form: kids can choose shape, colors, scents. Plain or stripy? With camomile or almond? Moisturizing or nourishing? The range of choices is vast.
And what can be more exciting than the magic transformation of a liquid mass into a solid, beautiful piece? It is much more interesting to wash your hands with a DIY soap, and as a result, your kids will acquire useful hygiene skills.
Conclusion
This year’s quarantine has probably drained you from all the ideas to keep your kids entertained – especially since keeping the balance between work life and parenting routine is challenging enough. The most popular indoor activities such as paper crafts or cooking coloured rice may take too much time, so wouldn’t it be better to find something that will allow you to spend more time together daily?
One of the solutions may be letting your kids get involved in everyday housekeeping chores with you. In the beginning, it may not be going so smoothly and will take more time than it would if you did it yourself, but eventually, you will find your rhythm together, and they will get in the habit of helping you.
Remember – kids value more the quality time you spend together, and not how many kid-friendly activities at home you can think of. So, when deciding what to do next, just make sure that you involve them.
