Nowadays, with the global COVID-19 pandemic, staying healthy is vital to your kids. Physical fitness is something that can be best taught to children during this lockdown through games and other exciting activities. When kids are healthy, their bodies can keep disease and illness at bay. To promote fitness and mental wellness, parents can use appropriate indoor activities that children will enjoy during this stay-at-home month.
Indoor activities offer a range of unique and energetic exercises to make everyone feel happy and engaged at home. Here, boredom never finds its way, as there is a wide variety of activities available to suit varied tastes and preferences.
Here are the best indoor activities for kids during the COVID-19 circuit breaker period in Singapore:
Marshmallow Tinkertoys
A bag of marshmallows and a few thin pretzel sticks are all you need to be the perfect companion, a 3D house, or a shed. Your child sticks the marshmallows with the sticks to create his perfect work of art. Add to the fun by putting stuffed pigs or different creatures in the ‘house’ and making your kid the big bad wolf in ‘Three Little Pigs’.
Family-Photo Bingo
Improve your tyke’s memory and help him understand who’s in his family tree with this photo fun. Take nine family photos and arrange them in rows of three, then give your tyke nine cards or tokens to complete with bingo tokens. When someone pulls out “Dad” or “Grandma”, the child covers the photo with the card. Whoever gets three consecutive victories wins.
Sugar Cookie Pizzas
Even the most locally tested gourmet connoisseur can complete this sweet and simple adventure. Cut some big treats into a cold mix of sweet treats. Tenderly smooth them down on a treated sheet to enlarge; prepare and cool for about 10 minutes. Then your little Mario Batali can decorate his cakes with a strawberry stick or red icing for the sauce, grated coconut for the cheddar cheese, and red M&Ms for the pepperoni.
Dress Up Box
Sort all your old clothes. Surely there will be outrageous clothing, clothing that’s no longer part of your wardrobe. Put these clothes in your dressing room. Your child can have fun for hours playing dress-up.
Kitchen Cooking
Look for good and simple recipes for cakes, snacks, etc. Let your child help you prepare them or let your child be the head chef and help you. Children love this activity and generally like to eat their creations too.
Board Games
Buy age-appropriate board games. These are always useful on rainy days or when you need to give your kids a screen-break (especially when they are clamouring to play computer games).
Gardening
Ask them to help you with your garden. Buy children’s gardening gloves and a small watering can, and have them plant seeds. They’ll love to watch them grow. Their pride will increase as they have created something from scratch; it teaches them care and responsibility too. If you love plants but don’t have much space, try indoor plants for easier maintenance.
Treasure Hunt
This can be done inside your home or in your garden. Hide small objects, toys, or candy in various places. Draw maps with “X marks the point”. Keep directions simple and easy.
Indoor Golf
Have the kids run around the house and create their own golf course. Use toys, toiletries, kitchen utensils, or anything else on hand to create the “holes” and paths.
Interactive Storytelling
Begin to understand one of your child’s most loved books. When you reach a teachable moment, help your child practise values like empathy by posing critical questions. For example, if you are reading Cinderella and have reached the scene where the evil step-sisters ripped her dress off, ask your child, “What would you do if someone did this to you? Should Cinderella run away and cry? Or should she do something else?”
Freeze the Dance
This activity is fun for all ages and really makes kids move. Pick a favourite song on Spotify or YouTube, then have your kids dance. Fast music generally works best for this game due to the contrast between its movements and freezing. Stop the music intermittently. You can play an elimination game (where people who don’t freeze are “out”), or you can keep everyone involved for the duration of the game.
Obstacle Race
This is another activity that really moves children. Create a course within the largest room in your home. You can even go down the hall if you want. Your elements of the obstacle course will depend on the age of your children. You can drag them under chairs and tables, jump on piles of folded napkins, and throw bean bags in a bucket. You can time each child and have them try to break their own record.
Guess the Object
Put many items of different shapes in one basket and cover them with a towel. Children should hold the item under the towel and guess what it is without looking at it.
Sensory Table
Note the disgusting need to force your hands through a box of fake eyeballs, also known as peeled grapes, in a haunted house. This action offers similar rainfall without bad dreams. Fill a series of dishes or wash dishes full of finished items — peeled grapes are always a decent decision, as are gel-cooked spaghetti, steel wool cushions, cornstarch, or dried beans. Blindfold your child, ask him to stretch his hands and get him to describe what he feels. He can even try to guess the object!
Hide and Seek
Spice up this traditional favourite: start by hiding in observable areas with certain parts of your body sticking out, such as your leg or arm, or make small noises by clearing your throat or coughing to help your child find you easily. She will squeal as you pretend to continue hiding!
Fun With Balls
Stand a few yards from your children, then slowly roll whatever balls you have in the house up toward them. Ask them to take it and return it to you. Or throw the ball a few yards away and ask your kids to return it to you. Vary your actions and have your kids crawl and walk towards the ball, or bend to lift it.
Fun With Water
Fill a large pot with water. Put plastic toys or paper boats in it, and your children will have loads of fun.
Storytime
Children love to see colourful pictures. Choose a children’s storybook and start reading the story to them as they look at the pictures in the book. A good story before bedtime helps them relax and settle down. If you make it a routine, you’ll not only bond more deeply with your kids, but also help them improve their literacy and imagination too!
Magic Carpet
This activity is known as baby drag, but you can add fun to the name by calling it a magic carpet. All you need for this is a big blanket and the need to make sure your little one is old enough to have the strength of his neck and heart. Place the baby on the blanket in a position where you hold the sides of the blanket. The child can lie or sit in any way that makes him/her feel happy. Then take a corner of the blanket and slowly drag the child around the house. It would be a good way to develop the strength of your arms and keep your little one smiling and laughing as s/he ‘walks’ on the magic mat.
Baby Shopping
This is another simple indoor activity popular with children. All you need for this is to clear the room of any furniture with sharp edges. It is an imaginative game where children pretend to be bears, crabs or their favourite animal character, or just remain a baby. Put them in line and ask them to run to the end of the room, then come back to finish the race. You can also have a race on a wheelbarrow where the child uses his hands to run while you hold his feet. It will help the little ones develop their muscular strength while having fun indoors.
20 Questions
Everyone writes a secret word: the word must be the name of an object. The others ask 20 questions and try to guess the word. This game is immensely fun for kids and adults.
Alphabet Soup
Take turns finding words that start with different letters of the alphabet. If it starts with A, the next person must find a word that starts with B and so on.
Play on Words
This game is really good for preschoolers, i.e. for kids who are getting ready to read or spell. Start with a word, and then the next person must find a word that begins with the sound with which the first word ended (e.g. kids, snake, etc.).
Laundry Basket Game
If you have more than one child, a simple laundry basket in your home can be better than any commercial playground equipment. In this game, one child climbs into the basket, and the other pushes him into the room. This can also come in handy for the kids’ bathroom, where you can put cool items on the go while pushing your child into the bathroom. Put soap, loofah, bath toys on the go, and older kids will pick up these items as you push them into the bathroom area.
