Published on: 15/Dec/2020
Kids are a bundle of energy and with excessive free time and no schedule, this energy could be explosive. Thus it is important to channel this energy in a constructive way. Here are some interesting and time-tested ideas to help you keep your kids engaged.
- Engage Them in Art and Craft: Get your child’s creative juices flowing. Provide your child with age-appropriate art and craft materials – you can find unique supplies on Incraftables if you’re in need of a few ideas – and involve him in activities based on his ability and skill level. Encourage him to keep improving his skills. Don’t expect perfection. Instead, acknowledge the effort and encourage his creative expression. Keep a supply of art and craft material handy such as drawing and painting, clay modeling, papercraft and origami, beadwork, basket weaving, sewing, knitting, etc. Nowadays digital art has become an effective medium to pursue one’s interest in art. There are many online drawing and animation classes for kids where they can learn different aspects of art.
- Provide Your Child With Open-Ended Toys and items like blocks, tangram, lego, magnetic tiles, and story cubes. These kinds of activities allow liberal use of imagination to create something new every time. Children can also ideate some games and activities with the help of these play items. Parents should join the child in these new ideated activities. For example, one can build something by taking a few pieces from each set of blocks, lego, tiles, cubes, etc. New items like straws, dices, leaves, etc. can be added.
- Make Reading a Habit: Open the door to a world of books for your child – from stories of fantasy to adventure, from thrillers to biographies, from factual to how-to books, the list is endless. Make reading a daily habit, a bedtime ritual, or an evening routine. Read regularly to your younger children. Have your child write and illustrate her own storybook or write her own biography through journaling. Reading fuels your child’s imagination and helps her improve her vocabulary, comprehension, and even storytelling and writing skills.
- Deep Thinking: An occasional challenge to exercise the brain keeps it healthy, growing, and sharp. Choose challenges that are at her level to keep her interested and feel successful. If it is too easy, she will be bored, if it is too difficult, she will not want to try. Here are a few thinking activities such as jigsaw puzzles, Rubik’s cube, brain games, and puzzles, word games, crossword puzzles, math and logic puzzles, sudoku. These brain exercises help boost your child’s critical thinking, logical, and reasoning skills, all essential in getting your child ready for a future that demands creative thinkers and problem solvers.
- Explorations and Experimentation: Create opportunities for your child to explore and experiment with different ideas and materials. This fuels the scientist and inventor in your child. These experiments may not lead to discoveries. But they help your child learn that it’s okay to make mistakes and you need to keep trying before you get it right. Along the way, you never know what your child will discover and learn. A few ideas to explore:
- There is so much experimentation that can happen in the kitchen – different recipes to try and new ones to innovate
- Get your child some science, engineering, and technology exploration kits
- Give recyclable material and see what new inventions your child comes up with.
- Engage Children in Household Chores: Involving kids with chores is a great way to teach responsibility around the house. It’s a better way to balance work and play. Moreover, it provides an opportunity to involve the whole family in doing household chores. While assigning the works to kids make sure that these are simple tasks, age-appropriate chores, include all family members and involve children in the decision-making process.A Chinese confinement nanny is a specially trained postpartum caretaker who helps new mothers recover from childbirth and adjust to life with a new baby. If you wish to hire one, do visit My Asian Nanny website for more information.
Conclusion: As parents, we all try to balance the demands and challenges while caring for our children’s well-being. We hope these ideas will help parents engage children in meaningful learning.
4. Encourage child to create interesting video presentation of her hobby work. This video memory will become precious in growing years and a sweet memory to be cherished in adulthood. Give your child freedom in showing the skills and talent learnt through this presentation. This video can be easily made through the smartphone. The child can do on their own with some assistance from parents.
- Record the drawings with background music.
- Capture the football tricks with some voiceover.
- Shoot a popular dance number and merge it with original screen act side by side. 5.
In this rapidly changing world around us, Creative thinking is the most sought after skills in present and future jobs. Infact it develops survival instinct. The earlier the child gets introduced to this skill, it’s better. So, let’s get started to talk more about ideas, imaginations and creations with children.