44 not out – things to try with your family during lockdown

At the start of the period of school closure, I wrote about how the tough task of combining entertainment and education could be approached.  I make no claims at all to have done everything right – we have had some challenging times at home – but here are some activities which we have tried with our children.  Incidentally, apart from buying ingredients, I have hardly spent a penny (when others were stockpiling pasta and toilet rolls, I was stockpiling library books – thank you, Mrs Handbury for this idea!)

A few caveats: these were tried with our 4 and 6 year old boys; many could be adapted to work well with children of different ages too.  Secondly, you will notice that craft and digital pastimes don’t get much of a look-in – I am not opposed to them, just less practised.  Thirdly, some worked well and hit the sweet spot between entertainment and education, and some merely passed the time, but every little helps!

Many of these suggestions will either be blindingly obvious or ridiculously obscure, but I hope that at least one or two of them will be useful.

Making the most of their once-daily burst of out-of-house exercise

1. Go on a walk – this is the first of the ‘blindingly obvious’ suggestions; it can be made much more engaging and fun if it has an aim, e.g. find a dead animal (see activity 10); find a Gruffalo’s cave; play hide and seek; play pooh sticks; look for clues from the Victorian era, and so on.
2. Have a bike ride – again, an aim makes it so much more fun – and take a lock to combine a bike ride with an ‘exploration’ in the woods or park.

Garden fun – for those lucky enough to have one to use – mostly from the RSPB (@Natures_Voice)

3. 3. Make a bug hotel – and checking it every subsequent trip to the garden.
   4. Make a bat house – and watching forlornly as it remained unlived in.
   5. Make a bee house – ditto!
   6. Conduct a nature survey – find the bugs (lifting stones), name the plants, and recognise the bird calls.
   7. Put together some bird kebabs – a twist on refilling the bird feeder – just thread small pieces of fruit onto a length of string, then step back and…
   8. …Make an animal hide then have a go at bird-spotting!
   9. Plant seeds – indoor and outdoor – including growing an avocado plant from its ‘pit’ (Google it).

Mission:Explore (@MissionExplore)

10. Attempt to solve the mystery of an animal’s death – we found a dead mole on a bike ride, put a ring of pebbles around it, paid our respects and then tried to solve its death (my eldest noticed a bite mark near its neck!)
11. Discover a new life form (find out how a patch of bare earth grows over).
12. Navigate like a bat (in a dark room or blindfolded).
13. Swatch nature (matching natural colours with a paint swatch).

Creative

14. Use chalk – draw rainbows (thank you NHS), go free form, form letters and numbers, sundial, outline of things (e.g. sunbathing daddy) – and making our own Mondrian drawing (thanks to my sister for that idea!)
15. Make models – we spent a day (on and off) making, painting, and decorating a 2-foot-high cardboard Taj Mahal (with a camping stove gas bottle as the dome).
16. Making a papier mache and plastic bottle volcano which erupts lava (there are plenty of instructions online.
17. Writing cards to relatives (this took some persuasion).
18. Making and trialling paper aeroplanes from the top floor window.
19. Making sticker collages from the stocks that have built up over the years.
20. Making buildings from Jenga bricks.

Indoor or outdoor activities

21. Garden and indoor orienteering/Easter Egg/toy hunts.
22. Making the world’s tiniest bike course.
23. Making and trying out obstacle courses.
24. Making dens and having ‘picnics’ inside them.

Digital deeds

25. Slow-motion filming – e.g. racing toy cars down a slide (this took well over an hour and I must admit the results are strangely fascinating!)
26. Calling to grandparents and friends (story time with grandma – a saviour).
27. Doing ‘PE with Joe’ on YouTube Live (0900 every weekday from the second week onwards; good for my core even if they were more ‘free form’ in their motions!) Steve Backshall’s Wildlife programme is a more recent hit (0930 every weekday).
28. Trying other online sessions – e.g. indoor SwimFit sessions on Facebook Video from my coaching pal Martin Roscoe.

Kitchen antics

29. Baking sweet things – banana bread, scones, rock cakes, courgette cake, monkey bread.
30. Baking savoury things – bread and pizzas – preparing dough and baking.
31. Making meals – starting with pasta sauce (Dean Winter’s online recipe – on the Bradford Grammar School YouTube channel!), then helping with other dishes (even if the finished items weren’t consumed; the pasta sauce was though, I hasten to add).
32. Using a camp stove to make hot chocolates, soups, and more adventurous concoctions.
33. Making smoothies – for some reason, spinach is willingly consumed in this format, but not on a plate!

Opening the mind

34. Doing school/pre-school work – about 90 minutes a day for the youngest one – and going off on a tangent when the occasion arises – e.g. by looking at related websites/videos.
35. Having a regular show and tell with a friend – choose a different country or other topic a week.
36. Using Google Earth – let them go wild and let them take tours too (often more easily searchable on YouTube though).
37. Taking virtual tours of museums and galleries – via Google Arts & Culture, or straight from institutions themselves, e.g. Natural History Museum.
38. CBeebies – a wonderful ‘go to’ for longer stretches of time when you just need to get things done! Also, some CBBC output, like Horrible Histories.
39. My wife started a daily post-dinner nature documentary treat – starting with David Attenborough ones – these have been a great soother.
40. A special mention must go to the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony – what an entertaining and morale-boosting way to teach a child (and to remind a parent) about so many things which make Britain ‘Great’. We have the DVD and the rumour is that the BBC is due to show it again soon!

Miscellaneous

41. Lego deserves a special mention – mixed in with newer purchases, the huge box of my childhood Lego that I rescued from my parents’ loft over a decade ago has made its way into our spare room, after several years being pressed into service in lessons on how to build an earthquake-resilient house. It is easy to find old instruction booklets online, and we are currently making a Space Station set which was first released in 1979.
42. Helping with DIY and gardening jobs that have been put off for ages – e.g. washing and vacuuming cars, painting fences, sweeping the drive and cutting the lawn (in funny shapes first…)
43. Getting out the paddling pool and playing games and having ‘experiments’ with the water.
44. Simpler activities like ball games, jigsaws, colouring in, and tweaks to the usual routine, like longer bath times – and letting the boys’ imagination run wild with their toys and pens.

Of course, the thing that children will appreciate the most is our time, and whilst many of us are juggling child care and working from home, there are likely to be more opportunities to spend such time with them now than in the usual course of affairs.  Tiring and frustrating it may be, but it’s also rewarding and often fun, and a time we’ll look back on fondly (no doubt with rose-tinted spectacles!) in the future.

Thanks for reading.  Let me know what you think!  David (@DavidAlcock1)

P.S. Why 44 you may ask?  It happened to be the age I turned during the lockdown, so it seemed like a nice number to target!