There are all sorts of reasons you may find your family stuck indoors, from lockdown to rainy days. Here you’ll find five top ideas for keeping your kids occupied indoors, as well as a few cleaning tips for after the fun is done.
1. Make homemade jewellery
All you need is scraps of coloured paper and glue or uncooked pasta and paint, along with some string and scissors.
Roll the coloured paper into bead shapes or paint the pieces of uncooked pasta.
Once the glue or paint dried, thread them onto the string.
Cut to the length desired. If you are letting your children do this, make sure you have safety scissors and they do so while supervised.
Necklaces and even bracelets can be made this way, all you need to do to finish is knot the string ends together.
2. Make a bug hotel
This is a great way to teach your children about reusing recycled materials! A few ways you could do this include:
- Cut holes in the side of an old plastic bottle, and fill it with sticks, moss, grass and other organic material.
- Remove the side from a juice carton and stack a variety of materials inside such as old plastic straws, rolls of paper, pinecones, sticks, stones and grass.
- Glue old toilet roll tubes together and fill them with dried leaves and other materials.
3. Organise a treasure hunt
This is a great way to encourage your children’s learning and investigative nature! It’s also a great learning tool for shapes, colours numbers and so much more. Simply choose different items such as something red, something round, three toys and other ideas and ask them to find them!
4. Make bird feeders
For this all you need is some wire or string and food from the kitchen! Birds will be happy with hoop cereal, apple chunks, lard and of course seeds (if you have them!)
Make holes in any fruit or lard chunks using a kebab skewer.
Thread the different components onto your wire or string.
Twist it into a ring and tie it into a tree or hang it from a fence for the birds to enjoy.
5. Get creative in the kitchen
From making a loaf of bread to baking a cake, there are plenty of ways you can have fun with your children in the kitchen.
Cleaning tips for after the activities are finished
- Get the children involved. They made the mess, why not encourage them to help clean up. Even toddlers can do jobs such as put rubbish in the bin!
- Do it straight away. Leaving mess behind will only make it feel so much more stressful… instead of leaving it for later, get it done as soon as the activities are finished!
So, whether you’re looking for lockdown activities or rainy-day projects, you now have 5 great ideas to keep your kids occupied.