10 Fun Activities to keep your kids busy During COVID-19 Lockdown!

Hello Folks,

The year 2020 has been quiet challenging so far with COVID-19 and extended lockdown. Last couple of months are all about Social Distancing and staying home, staying safe. The routines have changed for everyone, and kids are not spared either. Schools are closed, and so are the parks, malls and other recreational/public places.  While there is an uneasy calm outside in the cities/towns, it is sometimes absolute chaos at home these days – managing work from home, kids and sharing household chores all together becomes a tough task.

Quarantining children at home becomes difficult as their routines get disturbed and keeping them busy becomes even bigger challenge. Thanks to the thoughtfulness of wonderful teachers from Vritima’s school – Chimply Fun Pre-school to arrange a virtual classroom 3 days a week – our little one was kept busy for few weeks since the school closed. However, since they can’t go out, and also, they get bored with repetitive toys and games at home in few days, we need to find new ideas and variety to keep them busy.

Here, with the inputs of Chimply Fun teachers and other parents in our circles along with our team of professionals, we have come up with 10 cool ideas and activities the kids can do at home and keep them busy during lockdown.

1. Feel & Tell

This activity will encourage your child to use and understand ‘describing’ words.This is one of the first steps in making your child to write stories, or paraphrase things.

Without your child seeing, put a selection of different textured objects inside a pillow case, bag or a box. For example, a hair brush, a tooth brush, a comb, a pebble, a shell, a feather, a pencil, and many more.

Describe an object and invite your child to feel inside the container to find it. Say – ‘can you find me something smooth and hard?’ (the pebble). IF he/she can’t find the right thing, give them another clue like – ‘it feels little heavy and cold.’

If  you think you could give a chance to your child to describe an object, let them describe it and you take the turn to guess and find the object.

2. Pretend Play

Choose an old wallet or purse of yours and fill it up with expired credit or debit cards, gift cards, old receipts, few coins and hand drawn money. Pretend play to go shopping!! Let your child be a shopkeeper or a customer alternately. The kids can also display some of their toys as wares to sell!

Other pretend play scenarios can be in a restaurant, a movie theatre, airport, on the road, school.. the options are unlimited!
If you really ponder, kids are actually playing out scenes from the world around them, all the time.

Pretend plays are great ways for the kids to experiment and learn about the ways of social life. You will often hear your own words reflected in your child’s play. So, all the more important for us to be mindful about our words, expressions and actions.

3. Eyes on the Ice

Make ice cubes using water mixed with food colouring (use the three basic colours) that is non-toxic.
Use the ice cubes as blocks and try stacking them. Watching them melt is lots of fun and will bring up all kinds of conversation!!

This could be done with just a single colour on any surface, or inside a clear glass where they can see the iced water mixing with the water in the glass.

Next, take a thick white sheet of paper and stack all the three colours’ ice cubes. When the ice cubes melt the sheets take on the colour. Also, if the colours mix, you may have a different colour.
Watching the ice melt and mix to form a new colour can be lots of fun and a new learning!

The children will not really able to eat these ice cubes, but what they can have is sweet watermelon juice mixed with little lemon juice and frozen into ice trays! It’s yum!

4. What will Sink and What will Float?

Your child can learn some basic physics through this activity, by observing how a variety of familiar objects take to the water!
Materials required:
A basin or a plastic bowl that your child can see into clearly; some familiar objects such as an apple, a crayon, a rubber ball, a plastic ball, a paper cup, a spoon, balloon, etc.

How you do the Activity:
Fill the basin or plastic bowl with water.
Explain the words ‘sink’ and ‘float’ to him/her.

Before placing any of the objects into the water, ask your child to guess if the objects will float or sink (he/she could also say if the objects are going to ‘stay on top’ or ‘go to the bottom’ in case you feel that they are too young to remember the meaning of the words float and sink).

Let her place one object at a time into the water to test her guess.
Help her see the common attributes of things that float (lighter weight, air inside, larger surface area) and those that don’t float (heavier, no air inside, small surface area).

Lead her to observe that some items, like the paper cup, may float until enough water gets inside, causing them to sink!

5. Crumpled Paper Art

Ask your child to take one piece of plain paper and crumple it up into a ball. (I love that feeling!).

Choose one color and let her paint all around the outside of the ball. Gently unfold it, and see how it looks. Press it down gently.

Crumple it up again, and let her paint it with another color. Then gently unfold it and press it down. You can stop only after two colors, but you can continue this process with a third color if you have the patience.

Use the beautifully finished papers for all kinds of things like little notes, fridge stick-on, collage work, etc. if your child spends even half an hour doing this activity, give yourself a pat! (After cleaning the mess of course) ?

6. Pasta to the Rescue!!!

If Kareena Kapoor Khan can flaunt it, then so khan you!
To spell it out for those who shrug celebrity gossip, she recently sported a pasta necklace made by her son. ?

To make one, your child will have to thread the string through the pasta until the thread is full. You can go for a plain or an assorted style. You can use Macaroni, Penne or Rigatoni pasta to create different designs. Then tie a knot and flaunt!?

Very good for fine motor movement!

7. What Happens If?

A good way to engage and bond with your kids is having a conversation with them!

Well, having a talk like this can help your child consider consequences in everyday life. Ask your child questions like the ones below and if she gets the answer right, ask her how she could have prevented the outcome.

What happens when you don’t drink water all day?
What happens if you don’t dry yourself after a bath?
What happens if you leave the cake in the oven for too long?
What happens if you forget to switch off the gas burner while boiling the milk?
What happens if you don’t switch off the tap?
What happens if you mix wet and dry trash?
What happens if you bang your toys too hard?
What happens if you don’t fill the car with petrol?
What happens if you forget to carry your house keys?

Depending on your child’s AGE and level of curiosity and the things that he/she likes, create your own “what if” questions for your child!

8. Starry Starry Nights!

Stick a cardboard on a tissue paper or a cupcake liner, and poke holes, preferably in a pattern. Wrap this on the torch. Voila!
You can make more than one and change the pattern!

9. Stamping!

Vegetable stamping – Try the ever popular vegetable stamping with a couple of bhindis dipped in colorful paints. If you do not have them (which may quite be the possibility in lockdown?), carve a clear shape on a potato (I’m sure you have them in stock!) and you can do the same.

Tissue paper roll stamping- Dip the rounded end of the cardboard roll and stamp away!

10. Water Beads and Shaving Cream!

Water beads are great sensory toys and good fun for the kids. But why not double the fun with water beads and shaving cream? Hide water beads under a bed of shaving cream in one container and clean water in the other. Ask your child to find them, wash them with clean water and put them back in the jar/bottle.  

This will keep them busy for good amount of time and is totally worth it. This is a messy activity, but kids love to get messy, don’t they? Once they are done playing, simply wash the beads, and of course, don’t forget to wash your child too.