For families that are suddenly caught in a lockdown, or are having the struggle of entertaining a toddler, here are easy simple play ideas that you can do at home with your little one. Many of these activities use regular household items, a trick learned from the last lockdown at home in 2020.
Although online learning is not something new, one helpful tip would be to create a daily schedule. Mix it up with indoor play, water play, sensory play. They can all be done on an alternating schedule so activities will not get old.
Got household items? Maybe some water colour or food colouring?
Add one teaspoon of vinegar to your coloured water and with a syringe spray it on the baking soda. This will create a bubble effect and is so fun for the kids! It can easily be an activity for 30 mins.
We enjoy painting. And we enjoy making colourful ice bars for painting. whether you are holding the ice or using a brush, it goes down easy onto the paper. It was also fun for our toddler to see the changing water properties while creating these colourful, large ice cubes. All you need is food colouring and a big enough ice mould. We used silicon cupcake moulds.
Don’t underestimate the power of competition. If you have leftover paper, make paper airplanes and see who can get the most number of airplanes into the laundry hamper!
Out little one enjoyed playing with making forts. We even transformed her bed upside down to make it a fun play area (of course while we were in the process of changing bedsheets and wiping down the mattress).
Using a large casserole dish, you mix cornstarch with water until you get a watery substance that runs through your fingers, yet if you let it sit, it becomes hard. Find loose small objects and add them in (not too small for young kids if they enjoy puttng things in their mouth and certainly, do this as a supervised activity!)
Let them use a plastic spoon and dig out the treasure. If your kid is into washing, they will have so much fun cleaning the little pieces!
If you have an empty plastic or glass bottle with a screw top, you can make a sensory bottle. Add in a few drops of food colouring to oil and water, and you can see the oil bubble around. Add glitter (if you dare have any at home) and this would be fun for the kiddo.
Alternatively If you have a younger one, or a toddler that’s musical you can also use the empty plastic plastic bottles and fill it with rice or pasta or lentil beans. Screw the tip on and shake shake shake!
If you want to practice coordination, this is a great game that you can do. All you need is uncooked spaghetti and a colander. Insert dry pasta into colanders. This also works if you want to get more creative, you can use pipe cleaners.
In 2020, we used pipe cleaners inserted in paper cups as part of a DIY kit.
Another variation of this activity is threading pasta. Use penne and thread string through it.
If you have an old kuaidi box and paint, you can make holes in the same colour as little objects in your home. Have your kid sort the same colour objects into the matching holes.
We used Legos, however you can use whatever coloured objects that are easiest for you.
If you don’t have blocks, how about tin cans? We had plenty of soda and ginger ale cans, and our kid loved playing pyramid with it. It can keep them busy for many days.
It also informed us that after the 2020 lockdown, we should purchase our own wooden blocks.
Good luck to all the parents and remember that this is only temporary!
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