You’ve probably already dusted off the board games and taught the kids pastimes that don’t involve technology. You’ve used blankets and cushions to build forts in the living room – and tidied everything up a dozen times. Baked a few cakes, built Lego towns and chatted to everyone you know on FaceTime.
So, what else is there to do with the family during this time of lockdown or isolation?
We’ve come up with some great ideas of things to do with kids during isolation, including fun and educational kids swimming lessons, that you possibly hadn’t thought of.
SEA LIFE KELLY TARLTON’S
Enjoy a virtual visit to Sea Life Kelly Tarlton’s aquarium and enjoy live streams of their star creatures, their keepers and aquarists. The newly-released Merlin’s Education Toolbox is a free online resource that delivers educational videos, worksheets, craft activities and fun facts that will inspire the kids.
NASA KIDS’ CLUB
Learn about NASA and its missions, test your driving skills on Mars, meet the crews currently orbiting Earth on the International Space Station, look at NASA’s coolest images, and generally just allow your kids to absorb all the fascinating stuff on their site. The games support STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – so it’s a great way to inspire kids during this isolation.
HAVE YOU MET ELIZA, THE CHATBOT?
Eliza isn’t really new – she was created around 1964 and has limited capacity but is great for the little ones. Using “pattern matching”, Eliza gives canned responses to questions that are typed in but it is fun to see what her responses are. She had a 2018 resurgence in interest when featured in an episode of Young Sheldon – Sheldon, of course, lost interest in her fairly quickly as he realised that the program was limited.
TRY MITSUKU – THE CHATBOX FOR OLDER KIDS
Mitsuku, or Kuki as she is better known, is a lot more advanced than Eliza and can respond efficiently to all sorts of topics. She is, in fact, the world’s best conversational chatbot and can do magic tricks and play games for you.
TED-ED TALKS’ FOR KIDS
Expert educators and TED speakers throughout the world have come together to create and share daily free interactive, high-quality, video-based lessons for kids of all ages. Subjects cover the arts and sciences, business, design, philosophy, thinking and learning – pretty awesome, we have to say.
UPLOAD FUNNY FAMILY SKITS TO TIKTOK
Choreograph a family dance session, do the rehearsals and then upload a video to TikTok. This platform is heaps of fun – you’ll see people doing skits, lip-synching, playing pranks, doing gymnastics or singing. Vie for your 15-seconds of fame with heaps of other people – perhaps you will go viral!
CREATE A TREASURE HUNT
Who doesn’t love a treasure hunt! Write out clues on bits of paper and distribute them around the house so that one clue leads to another. Make sure you have a treasure – or, to keep the peace, a few treasures – at the final destination. Depending on the age group you can either draw pictures for the young ones or riddles and rhymes for the older ones. Choose really weird places to hide the clues and watch your kids giggle their way through a few hours of fun.
GO CAMPING IN THE BACKYARD
Put up a tent, get out the flashlights, set up the bedding and pretend you’re camping in some beautiful location. To give it a real authentic feel, you can even have a few outdoor sounds on your phone playing in the background. No music – you’re camping, remember…and you have neighbours.
If you can set up a safe fire, spend some time toasting marshmallows, telling stories and sharing fun ideas about all the places you can visit and things you can do once isolation is over.
If the kids are slightly older, let them try sleeping outside on their own but be sure to check on them often and don’t be surprised if you have them knocking on your door before too much time has passed.
EVER WANTED TO LEARN HOW TO SING?
Hop onto YouTube and check out The Quarantine Choir. They offer short videos that teach you how to sing and, once you’ve upped your skills on this, you can get feedback from the Freddiemeter – a karaoke AI of Freddie Mercury that rates how well you sing. And, once you have Freddie’s approval, check out The Sofa Singers for an online singalong with people throughout the world.
TEACH YOUR KIDS A NEW LANGUAGE
Download a language learning app such as Duolingo, HelloTalk or Babbel and start learning a second language with the family. These are gamified so they do provide entertainment whilst you learn.
Duolingo, MemRise, HelloTalk or Babbel… AND, what better time to start learning Te Reo.
CREATE A MEMORY BOX
This could just be an old shoebox but if your child is going to use it for years to come, it would be a good idea to use a wooden box. Let your child personalise it with decorations, stickers and ribbons. Explain that the memory box won’t be opened for a while so they should only include items that they won’t miss or don’t need. Ideally, memories from the past few years is a good idea.
DOWNLOAD PLAYHOORAY ACTIVITY SHEETS
Download and print out loads of free fun games and craft projects for children of all ages. A great way to support your children’s learning and development through play.
WRITE A CHAIN-STORY
Get each family member to write a paragraph and then only show the final line to the next writer. Once the final person has written their section, read the whole story out loud.
MAKE A SUNDIAL
Yes, there was a time when we didn’t have clocks and had to rely on a sundial to tell the time! You’ll need an all-day sunny spot; a compass to find where north is; and a stick. Put the stick in the ground and watch the shadow change position as the sun moves.