Our kids have been at home for months now.
And even though home schooling takes up plenty of their time, there are still hours each day where they need entertaining.
Children have started to grow bored of Zoom lessons and learning, but thankfully there are other ways to fill their days.
If you have a restless little one who is stuck at home and want to make the most of their time before they return to lessons on March 8, listen up.
YouTuber parents Anna and Jonathan Saccone Joly have some fab ideas for you – check them out below.
What fun ideas have you had for keeping children busy and having fun? Tell us in the comments…
Jonathan, 39, and Anna, 32, have a combined social following of over 8 million people on social media – particularly their YouTube channel.
With their four beautiful, albeit mayhem-inducing children, Emilia, 7, Eduardo, 5, Alessia, 3, and Andreas, 1, the family are perfectly positioned to offer some sage advice to fellow parents.
Here’s what they had to say:
Family games night
Making a big deal out of something quite ordinary can be the best trick to entertain kids.
Choosing child-friendly games and inducing a bit of healthy competition will leave the children feeling content and tired – perfect!
Make it outdoors
If you have a garden or some nearby outdoor space, taking the kids out for a set game or activity is a really lovely way to spend a Sunday.
We find Saturday’s are usually spent doing the things we didn’t have time for during the week, so Sunday is really the best day to hang out as a family.
With the weather becoming kinder, we have been playing some crazy games outside, we even held a family sports day.
Being creative and doing something you wouldn’t normally do gets the kids excited and it’s always great for wearing them out, so they reach the end of the day tired.
Getting out of the house while being a family with four children (not forgetting the six dogs) can be bit of an ordeal, especially during a time like lockdown where everything is by its nature a little more intense and restricted.
But, if you plan your route carefully and have a set destination, the park, the nearby woods or walking trail, it can be just the day out everyone needs.
We usually come prepared with sandwiches and other snacks, sometimes we bring a ball, and just go for a long walk – which is pretty much all we can do right now!
We try to turn it into a bit of a game with the kids – singing songs, pretending to search for something.
Sometimes, just changing our attitude to make it more fun really helps the day run smoothly.
Bake it alright
Get everyone involved with making a family meal – whether it’s baking, an at-home picnic or a healthy lunch, embrace the mess and give everyone a task to focus on.
Back to basics
It’s so easy to get into a rut with how to help the kids have fun and cope with all the groundhog days we’ve been having recently.
We’ve tried to encourage them to be inventive with their games – we helped to build a fort with them the other day and made it into a bit of a pirate ship.
They started playing this crazy game (heavily borrowed from Peter Pan) and 40-40 home, which has been really entertaining to watch.
Other things we have done recently is bake biscuits, make scrapbooks, listen to audiobooks, colour in, we even held a movie night and the kids made tickets!
I think the main thing is to draw inspiration from your friends and family, I thought about the scrapbook idea because I spoke to my mum, so definitely ask if anyone around you if they have any tried and tested suggestions.