At Home Activities to Enjoy with Your Children
Activities to play with your children while being home
With the changes in day-to-day life having a huge impact on families’ daily routines, this can be a very overwhelming time for parents that don’t know what to do with their kids. We’ve put together a list of activities to help your children’s mental health through this difficult time.
Our primary recommendation is to try to keep a routine by mapping out how the days will flow and setting up specific times for readings, free time, mealtimes, family time and bedtime. Create a visual schedule for your new routine. This not only establishes a predictable environment where they feel safe, but it also provides motivation by helping them better understand expectations and when activities will occur.
Here are some activities that you can do to help the time indoors pass.
Play with their favorite toy: Helps them build essential developmental skills as they play. Use them to build verbal expression, social skills, fine motor skills and more as you play together.
Play card games or board games: These games will help with their memory and social skills. Some examples of games are Tic-Tac-Toe and Hangman. Tic-Tac-Toe which helps with hand-eye coordination and encourage better social interaction. Alternatively, Hangman helps develop fine and gross motor skills while the words that need to be memorized and spelled correctly will use executive skills and also incorporates language learning. Here you will find 18 additional game recommendations.
Different sensory plays: Help children explore, create and discover new sensations while make it a fun activity.
Doing puzzles: Help with visual skills, thinking and problem solving.
Listening to music: Helps them become more flexible, responsive and attentive, leading to better social and communication skills. You can also have them sing along!
Dancing: It’s a form of expression for them and shows an increase in the children psychological well-being, body awareness, self-other awareness, and social skills. Some dancing-related games could be musical chairs or freeze dance.
Watch learning videos like Dave and Ava: These helps them to better identify and regulate emotions, communicate and express themselves, manage time and routines, and practice successful social exchanges.
Play with Legos: Helps the child to better engage with siblings, share experiences, and collaborate. This means that the children who are likely to benefit from playing with legos are already at least somewhat verbal and able to follow both visual and verbal instructions.
Drawing and painting: It can be an alleviating activity, helping reduce some of its symptoms, providing an outlet for self-expression, and encouraging social interaction in a fun environment.
We hope this list of activities for kids inspires you to try them out and have fun with your kids at home while still providing opportunities for them to grow and learn!!