When my children were young and when I was working as a registered child minder, I was always looking for simple, cheap activity ideas that the children could do. Now that the corona virus is forcing some people to self isolate having things to entertain children is even more important:-
One of the most popular activities became a Christmas tradition in my setting.
I gave each child an empty shoe box ( most shops will happily give these away). I then supplied last years Christmas cards, some themed stickers and glue, the children covered their box with the pictures, I then made a solution of 1 part P.V.A. glue to 2 parts water which when pasted over the pictures. helped keep them in place and gave them a varnish. After leaving to dry overnight the children then filled their treasure box with Christmas makes ready for taking home on Christmas eve.
Treasure boxes could be made to suit other themes; Easter, a birthday or a holiday memory keepsake.
Another idea is to give the children a piece of foam,( oddments of foam can be purchased from scrap stores for a few pounds) some golf tees or toothpicks and a small hammer.
. Children are encouraged to hammer the tees into the foam to make a design, or if you paint a number on the foam, hammer that amount of tees. Number recognition here.
Learn to match and recognise colours by using empty toilet roll tubes painted in different colours then provide items of different colours and ask the children to place them in the corresponding tube.
A favourite activity of a particular little boy was to ‘paint’ my garden fence on a sunny day. I supplied him with a bucket of water and one of my husband’s paintbrushes ( he was a painter and decorator) the boy then painted the fence; as the wood became wet it changed colour looking as if it had been painted.
Coloured chalks are great for drawing on paving slabs and as the rain will wash it away there is no cleaning up afterwards.
Give the children a piece of card each with a colour swatch on the top, then get them to look through old magazines for pictures of that colour, cut them out and stick onto the card to create a collage of the colour.Colour recognition here
Of course books, jigsaws and board games are also great for keeping children amused if you are forced to stay at home.
Arts and crafts on a shoestring .here.
As always questions and comments are welcome.
Until next time.
Karen
x
Great ideas! Little ones always love crafts and it’s a great way to keep them entertained #kcacols
Some lovely ideas on how to keep little ones entertained. I especially like the fence painting. Genius! #GlobalBlogging
I agree with last comment I loved the “paint the fence idea” really great ideas here which will be such help if we end up spending long hours indoors
Thanks Pearl
This is some great ways to entertain the little ones at home and this link up party helps me so much and it gets my mind of all the news
What lovely ideas to keep the kids occupied during this difficult time #AnythingGoes
Thanks, Rosie
Definitely great ideas to keep the kiddos entertain. #alittlebitofeverything
The chopsticks thing looks fun!!! #Stayclassymama
It is sad, but we can remember good times and make more in the future, hopefully
They are, thanks for stopping by
There are some fab ideas there. Thanks for sharing with the #DreamTeamLinky
If you could update your linky badge to the current one we would really appreciate it. Thanks
We loved treasure boxes when our boys were very small! #StayClassyMama
These are brilliant. I am going to share them in my two groups for parents I run. Thank you. Hope you guys are doing ok? #stayclassymama
That’s great, we are fine thanks, stay safe your self
All great ideas – & ones we could certainly do with now! #ThatFridayLinky
Great ideas to entertain the kids at home now that we have to stay in. I like the toilet paper one. Looks fun. 🙂 x
#kcacols
You have some wonderful ideas here! Definitely useful while we are all housebound. Thanks for sharing with #kcacols, hope you can join us again next time.
Some great ideas – I especially love the shoe box idea! We also use a water spray to spray our fence – can keep the little ones entertained for hours! #KCACOLS
These are all such beautiful ideas! #kidsandkreativity
Love the treasure box idea! 🙂 #kidsandkreativity
I like the idea of doing coloured toilet roll tubes and putting pompoms in the corresponding colour. Painting with water is such a fun idea too. #KidsandKreativity
Some more great ideas. I love the treasure box idea! Thanks again for sharing at #KidsandKreativity
I adore how simple these activities are. I bet they will keep kids entertained for hours!
Absolutely, thanks for stopping by and leaving your comment