School holiday fun with kids

If you are reading this, you are probably facing ‘school holidays-in-the-house with kids’ thanks to social isolation, so you may find these tips useful.

• Playing with Dad is important. Children who play with their fathers are more confident and better at coping with challenges, setbacks or problems. Playing with you can help your kids to cope with the challenges we are all facing now.
• Role play is a wonderful tool for social and emotional learning. If your kids can’t go to the shops, they can set up their own. They could create a restaurant, set up a circus, do a talent show, hairdressers or be a vet with toys. Join in as a customer once they are set up. Even older kids will play for hours.
• Think beyond sedentary activities on devices. Children can use technology for other positive purposes that just playing games or spending time on social media.
• Do a scientific mini exploration outside. Children can use phones to take photographs of the world from the perspective of an ant or a butterfly and create a picture or PowerPoint journal of day in the life of their mini creature.
• Explore the world online together from your home. Build on your children’s knowledge of the world around them. Learn about and locate different countries, name continents, countries, cities, rivers, mountains etc. Have family quizzes to test your knowledge.
• Get creative to get the housework done. Ask your kids to design a makeover of their bedroom by creating homemade pictures, rearranging displays and tidying and cleaning. Get them to draw up plans of their ideas first.
• Don’t be afraid of letting them get bored occasionally. Children don’t have many opportunities to let their imaginations flow and get creative in this era of over-stimulation. The ability to deal with boredom is an unmistakable sign of good mental health.

Try our downloadable activity sheet for getting back to nature challenge.

Download activity sheet