Fab Activities To Do With Children
It’s always a good idea to have a back-up plan full of activities for the children to keep them happy and occupied during the holidays, weekends and other periods at home. These don’t need to cost a lot of money, can be screen-time free and offer great learning experiences for the children too.
Random Acts of Kindness
One of the best lessons that we can teach our children is to be kind and considerate of others. Focus some of your activities on making other people feel good. They could draw a picture and send it with a letter to brighten someone’s day at the local nursing home. Perhaps they could sort through some of their old books and leave them outside for people to take for free? This is a great way to find meaningful activities for your children that are cost-effective and will mean the world to others.
I’m Bored Jar
The majority of parents will have, at some point, found themselves listening to “I’m bored” on repeat. One solution is to whip out the Bored Jar. Fill a jar with folded pieces of paper that a child can pull out when bored. They have to do whatever is on that paper. It could be to paint a picture of a house on an alien planet or it could be to learn all of the words to a song (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air will keep them going a while).
The flipside of the Bored Jar is that it could be “hoover the floor”, “mop the kitchen” or some other task that parents love to delegate. A top tip for the Bored Jar is to use 2 different coloured pieces of paper, one for indoor activities and one for outdoor. You could have two jars instead. This stops anyone pulling “Have 30 minutes on the trampoline” when it’s raining or “Go for a walk with Dad” when Dad is trying to work from home. Be inventive!
Find Them a Pen Pal
Did you have a pen pal when younger? Not only is writing to someone great fun, but this is also a great way to learn about new countries, new cultures, different families, lifestyles and perhaps even work on their foreign language skills. You can start out small with this with younger children, perhaps with postcards.
Why Not Start a Blog?
This isn’t a screen-free activity but is a great one for encouraging literacy and numerous other education benefits. As long as you are able to monitor their blog, ensure their safety and security online and keep an eye on comments a blog can be great fun. They can share days outs and experiences they’ve had, write book reviews, share gaming tips and more.
Fresh Air and Outdoor Fun
Your garden or yard offers a wealth of opportunities for some great fun activities for children. Outdoor chalk can keep children of all ages busy for hours. From colouring in the driveway to graffiti art, there’s no limit to the amount of affordable fun they can enjoy. Water is always going to offer a lot of fun, from making potions to full-on water fights. A great activity for little ones during warmer weather is to give them a big paintbrush and have them “paint” the fence with water. Great fun and it will soon dry and disappear.
Going green-fingered is another great way to keep kids of all ages occupied. From helping with a family vegetable garden to growing their own herbs and more, this type of outdoor activity is cheap, fun and you can enjoy the benefits in the kitchen.
Do you have any top tips for keeping children of all ages occupied? What are your favourite activities? Here at All You Need Essex we all agree that you really can’t beat a good board game.
Author: Nicki Cawood
(No rights to image – rights to Jessica Rockowitz via Unsplash)
