With the winter holidays in full swing parents have their hands full.
Here are a few activities children can keep themselves busy with indoors:. Have a tea party, or a baking day. Find an easy recipe or two, grab those aprons and get baking. You could make some cool cupcakes, get the kids to decorate them with different colour icing and invite granny over for tea.. Have an awesome arts and crafts session. You could whip out the wax crayons, glue and paint brushes for this one. Be creative; let them paint on different surfaces. Find shoes that have patterns underneath and do rubbings with wax crayons then paint over them with food colouring. Finish off the masterpiece by adding a material border. You could even use macaroni and glue! Have some glitter handy to make your art piece sparkle. If you have very young ones get them to draw (scribble) on a white piece of paper with a white crayon and then paint over it with blue food colouring that has been mixed with a little water. The wax crayon stands out. Now watch your toddler be amazed by his magic picture. No need to spend money on expensive paints, just mix a few bottles of different colour food colouring and voila you have water paints. . Board games: There are many different board games you could play with children and most will take up a good portion of the day to complete. Some really cool ones are Monopoly, Junior Scrabble, 30 Seconds, Snakes and Ladders and Ludo to name a few. For those who are a little too young to read, there are Jenga, dominoes and card games. . Play dough and clay: Play dough is fairly easy to make and can be played with for hours on end. You can also make salt dough that can be baked in the oven to preserve their precious creations. There are many different types of play dough so you could really do this activity twice a week. . Movies and popcorn: Want to do something different? Make your own movies. If you have an old camera recorder or most smartphones have video recording capabilities, you can use those. Let your child be the director of his own movie. Show them how the video recorder works on your mobile or camera and let him walk around filming things. Later on you can all sit back and watch his various short films together over a bowl of popcorn. You could even post some of the funny ones to YouTube and send links of them to family members who are overseas. . Scavenger hunt: Write a list of things found around the house your child must collect for you. They are not allowed to come to you until they have found all the items. They can work as a team or you can have two children with their own list. for some me time this game will keep the children busy for a while (depending on how long and how difficult the list is). Typical things to put on your list: three buttons, a toothpick, two blue pens, a round bowl, and so on. Reward them for most of the things found.
– News24
