Ideas To Entertain Your Little One At Home During Lock Down

As parents up and down the country are facing, with trepidation, the prospect of at least three weeks at home with their children – indoors for much of the time and without the welcome distraction of playgrounds, as we are being advised to avoid these to slow the spread of coronavirus – I want to share with you some of the entertainment tricks I have been using at home.

Toddlers have loads of energy and if not channelized well, might leave busy working at home parents full of frustration. Toddlers love to feel their importance and make themselves useful at home. They might be made to help in small daily chores like sorting vegetables and fruits, arrange cloth piles, dust furniture or sweep the floor.

They might be given their toy utensils and can be allowed to cook and feed others. Another curious toddler interest is sorting stuff – laundry into piles, different coloured/shaped toys into groups, toys into categories, cutlery drawer, shoes into pairs – so root out (or create) jumbles of items and get them to order it. They can also be included in drawing, scribbling, and painting.

Keep them active when indoors by having jumping, dancing, indoor cricket, football - it will tire them out and give you a bit of a workout too. They can also be encouraged to appreciate and preserve nature, cultivating kitchen garden, watering plants etc.

For older ones, apart from above mentioned activities, they can be involved in baking, peeling, mashing, stirring etc. Helping them serve dinner, clear plates and clear dining area.

The internet can be resorted to learning Origami and the kid can be surprised each day with a new creation.

For young or older kids who are taking this time as a respite from school books, they can be introduced to other story books (if and as anyone has access to). For toddlers, their story books, can be used to weave stories with variations each time to make the same books interesting. For those who do not have books, they can try asking the toddler / child to come up with few characters/ animals / birds / any objects and involve the child in weaving out a story from imagination.

I would encourage everyone to relax the rules over the next few weeks and allow kids to spread out their playing space – setting up various worlds involving vehicles, soldiers, dolls, farm animals or anything that is available at home.