In Lockdown Get the Lowdown On Activities (with all the children)!
3 points to make strides and not to struggle against the tides.... I’ve been lucky in some ways not to have to home-school but I do have experience in schooling medically vulnerable children. It’s vital to encourage language and interpersonal skills because that will form a great preparation for once this lockdown is over.
Ways to achieve that concern is based upon......HAVING FUN!
Making things together creates good skills so enlist a nice checklist of soft skills that your child will benefit from demonstrating, this includes little but essential courtesies like “please, thank you” and of course asking nicely and taking part as a group so that they can demonstrate creativity, initiative, ideas, communicating things that add to the activities.
Some of the activities you could make are baking and/or decorating cupcakes, cookies, mini pizzas, this will give them the opportunity to create things to share, so that they understand the rewards of making things to share food with and taken time and effort to value the goodness from preparing with care. Essential also to demonstrate care taken with personal hygiene and this includes no picking noses, cross-contamination of foodstuffs, and of course regular hand washing, this will enable little ones to understand about why we have to wash our hands so often and they learn how valuable it is for everyday.
From point 1. it will enable a good list to grade each task, and improve each week, points as they say mean prizes, and nothing better than a point system and rewards created by those little ones of what mean something to them to attain to and feel like winners! Even if you have one or more the interactions of all ages and genders will feel a part of something. And should there be an art or crafts angle it is a good way to place attentions on their efforts. And make an album, yes Instagram and other media are great to share with your network but I’d recommend having the efforts printed and placed in a folder or album to record this, believe me, in years to come you will know what I mean, especially the photographs of your darlings being playful and young all contained in a box to share and talk about in later years.
Be kind to yourself and have fun with them, make this time good for them this will help little ones no matter what age (and that includes teens) that they are valued and acknowledged which always works towards having great family times. Oh and one more point:
Clearing up! Yes please don’t do this alone, don’t anticipate a “no” just ensure that the rules are that everyone clears up and cleans. This encourages a camaraderie that engages them in doing something responsible.
The next blog I will focus on waste, yup, waste!
