A hot topic of discussion in the toddler-moms WhatsApp group in the midst of the much-needed lockdown in Mumbai has been around ideas to entertain their toddlers at home. With the daycares and playschools shut, we often tend to over-do the screen time as we are left with no choice. But even that works only to a point till the little ones get super-bored, or super tired, or super cranky and expect more. So I am trying to put together some tips and ideas based on my experience with my twin girls on tips to engage small children at home in a safe and healthy manner, along with a list of resources which I find useful for parents in a similar situation. So read along and have fun with your children!
1. Be partners in crime
- As much as possible, operate in shifts between you and your partner, especially if you're working from home than being a lone soldier in this and keep your house from becoming a war zone with work and kids becoming too much to handle.
- Small kids generally cherish the attentive time they get with each parent so preferably partner with your spouse but if that's not feasible anyone else at home can also become your parenting partner.
- Ensure each of you gets at least half an hour or one-hour 'me-time' for yourselves as well (for example, blogging is my 'me-time' - it's not something essential but keeps me happy because I am doing something I like).
2. Go with the flow
- Children are amazingly adaptive and can get very creative at entertaining themselves, when left to their own resources. Let your children surprise you by allowing 'free-play'. It is very important for them to learn to think on their own and make decisions for themselves.
- Create a safe zone where they cannot harm themselves easily, and give them 'space', literally! Lot of times, it does not matter to them whether they are in the park or in the corridor outside your apartment, or in your own hall, as long as they can play and are taken care of.
- You would be surprised at how creative kids can be while making a toy out of a simple cardboard box or a sofa cushion. They don't always need special toys.
3. Teaching children life skills
- When you have the time and energy (which I completely understand if you don't - no judgements on this space!), there're a plethora of things you can try to teach your little ones to keep them engaged outside of screen at home. I am just giving a few examples to pick on - I am sure you'll come up with betters ones unique to make it special for you and your little ones.
- Of course, most basic right now - handwash?
- Do your children know how to brush, or bathe, or put on their clothes, or shoes? How about you take time to make them try to do that on their own? Or start night-brushing, or bathing, if you are already not doing it?
- Do your children know the concept of numbers, colors, or counting? Maybe it's time to teach them a little bit each day? Keep reinforcing it through your daily conversations.
4. Physical activities
- All forms of entertainment doesn't have to come from gadgets. If you want to let your children do physical play, make a ball as their best-buddy. Depending on their readiness, they can kick / throw / catch / chase the ball.
- Depending on age and readiness, maybe this is the time to teach your little champ how to ride a tricycle, or a toy-skate scooter?
- Even without any additional instruments, try doing simple stretches with them. This will teach them the importance of exercise while you can have fun with them.
- More creatives ones can play music and try to teach a few moves. Too much fun!
- If it is possible for you, you can take them on a short stroll in a stroller, or a short walk with you in your building to let them get some fresh air along with you. Please don't tout caution and break rules when you're at it, and follow all safety precautions! Stroller is safer in these times because you can control their movements.
- Kids love water. Inflatable pools or make-do-bucket-tub. You can put the rest together :) Tub moments are the most joyous moments cherished in childhood.
5. Doing screen-time right
- Keep reiterating to your children to maintain a distance, keep the right posture and blink frequently while watching any video, from a young age.
- Treat screen-time as a learning activity. This will automatically limit the screen-time.
- Video-calls. Staying connected with friends and family. Do I need to say more? Make them participate and interact.
- Gadget time doesn't always have to be cartoons and rhymes. You can show them a variety of stuff like family photos, or pictures of different objects / things / places, ask them to recognize people, surroundings, ask age-appropriate questions them like recognizing what color, what people are wearing, what they are doing, etc. and take the opportunity to teach them different things. I often Google photos of specific real things like animals, or sports, natural phenomenon like rainbows etc. when I am explaining to them something from a book, or otherwise.
- Keep a variety, and try to make it engaging - by pointing to new things as they come up on the screen. Ask them questions about what is going on during or after each short video. This way, you can reinforce their knowledge, and kids love to show off what they know anyway :)
- Try to draw parallel examples to what you observe happening in daily life and remark on that during screentime or later. This makes the children engage in conversations and absorb what is going on. For example - 'see the small baby is sleeping with mamma, just like you do'.
6. Book-time and story-time
- At the risk of sounding prudish, I would say books are one of the best ways to engage children. I have written my first post on book reviews for young readers here - link
- Keep a mix of books, in terms of languages (include your mother-tongue) and formats (board books, lift-the-flap, flip-the-page, pictorial, text-heavy, cartoons, stories, etc.). Variety is good.
- When children are ready, keep highlighting the text you're reading from the book with your finger. It's just to teach them to pay attention to text from an early age.
- Stand-alone story narration without any book is also great, if you have the time and energy for it. Be expressive when you're narrating, and try to make it relatable. Encourage your child to emote and express too.
- You don't have to rack your heads on story ideas. Yan make-up stories simply based on incidents in the day, or things your kids like.
- Engage children by asking them questions and hearing them out - this applies for any activity. Depending on their readiness, you can make them recognize various colors, objects, letters in the book and / or answer questions on the story narrative.
- If your children are talking already, encourage them to narrate their own stories. Help them with a start 'Once upon a time..' and nudge them with follow-up questions so that they can make up their own stories. Show you're interested - you know how much they love that!
- Encouraging children to simply listen without visuals to stories, or poems, or music, or other appropriate material is also a great habit. It helps build concentration, and is perhaps a great pre-bedtime-routine. There is a lot of material available on Kindle and on various apps for that.
- If your kids have started talking, sky is the limit. You can make them recite poems, songs, rhymes, alphabet, numbers, and a variety of material - and teach them loads of stuff to pass time. Recitation helps develop their speech and pronunciation quickly.
7. Toy-time
- This is a no-brainer. Just temper it right. Small kids get weary of toys quickly. Every mom I know follows the trick of hiding old toys for days before positioning them as fresh ones to generate excitement about them again in kids.
- Also, giving limited toys at a time makes children focus and explore the toy better than being overwhelmed with too many at a time. While we cannot completely avoid it, we all don't want the only toy activity for our kids to throw them around or engage with them destructively :) Limiting the number of toys they're playing with at a time helps (to some extent!).
- Blocks can keep children entertained for hours. Classic Lego is worth it even if it's expensive.
- Who hasn't played with kitchen toys in childhood? Kitchen toys are inexpensive and from my experience with my daughters, keep them engaged for a long time. Don't gender the toys, and let your son play with them too.
- Friction toys and 'key toys' are very popular with young toddlers. My daughters have somehow taken to soft toys only recently, when they have developed a sense of role-play (changing their dolly's diaper!). Earlier, they were not so fascinated by soft toys to play with them for a long time. Not sure if this is universal, but if the tip helps you, give age-appropriate toys to your little ones. And you can encourage role-play too :)
- Roleplay sets, like the doctor's set, or a toy-toolkit, or musical toys, are also great to engage small children. Again, try not to give too many toys at a time.
8. Activity time
- Even without any special activity kits, you can make activities out of daily aspects. You can make them sort their toys like asking them to put them in a bag or a box. It's great to teach them to clean up.
- Take them through your daily tasks - may be try to take them through cooking rice, or making rotis, or folding clothes etc. Or show them the keys on your laptop and make them recognize alphabet.
- Discover the unexplored corners and objects in your house, those old photo albums, what's special about each show-piece in your living room, or simply your jewelry collection with your kids. Or explore the fruits and veggies or different items in your kitchen. They will find it fascinating.
- Get creative - Design activities to strengthen their skills. Ask them to search for a specific object to improve recognition, or pick up things with a cloth for fine-tuning motor skills, or make them mock-mop a surface for fun :)
- Kids love coloring and doodling. Cotton balls, crumpled paper, toothbrush, finger, sponge, crayons, slate and pencil can all be used. You can create organic colors using turmeric, or kumkum, or beetroot too.
- If you don't have playdough, you can make safe play-dough using atta (flour) adding any home ingredients for giving colors.
- Age-appropriate sorting, shape, stacking, jig-saw puzzles are all good fun.
- If you have the energy, you can even make them do mini-craftwork at home for which there are zillions of ideas online. I honestly don't have the energy for this :)
9. Conversations
- Above everything else, your children value your attention the most, though you may not able to give much of it during this time with all the chores piled up on top of probably working from home. Still try to listen, appreciate and respond to them to the extent possible. That beats any activity.
- When you're spending quality time, incorporate role-plays and play with them. My daughters love it when I mimic them and pretend that they're the 'mamma' and I am the 'baby'.
A few resources for getting more ideas on activities:
- Got this video forward on WhatsApp - hilarious, entertaining and highly creative. Unable to trace or link to source - please share the link if you know the source:
- Delivery is currently stopped given the current situation, but when available the Intellikit - link is very engaging and useful packed with activities.
- Babycenter India has great resources for infants - link, link and toddlers as well - link, link and link.
- Audible has made a lot of audiobooks for kids available for free - link. There are loads of additional apps with kids content on Playstore as well for both English and other languages.
- There is a lot of online tutoring material available now for home-tutoring, like this - link; and a lot of engaging video content like the popular Dave & Ava, Peppa etc..
- Google 3D search - link has become viral today given kids are in lockdown with parents. It doesn't work on some phones, but if you can make it work, it's amazing to have a tiger or a lion in your living room next to your kid. Do try.
Happy parenting! Stay safe!
Comments
Post a Comment