5 year old not sleeping

[PleaseChooseAnother]

My 5 year old DS has really been struggling with sleep since the school closed.

He's never been a great sleeper, but we had got into a fairly reliable routine of sleep around 7pm and waking around 6.30am. This seemed to be about the right amount of sleep for him.

Since schools have closed, he's awake until 9pm most nights but still waking at the same time. Tonight it's 9.45pm and he's still awake.

Some nights he's shouting for any reason he can come up with, but most nights he's lying quietly and just not managing to get to sleep.

He's exhausted almost every day (and so am I, as it means I don't get any downtime before I go to bed!)

I know that everything is strange for him at the moment. I try to be open as I can in an age appropriate way so that he knows he can ask questions if he doesn't understand what's going on, but I try not to mention anything unless he brings it up. We make sure he doesn't see the news.

Does anyone have any suggestions of how I can help him to sleep, please?

Is he getting enough fresh air and exercise? Could you increase that?

He has been getting a reasonable amount of fresh air in the garden but probably not a huge amount of actual exercise.

He's been very resistant to any exercise so far (maybe because he's constantly exhausted) but you're right about it possibly helping - I think we're going to have to insist from now on.

I think they've all had such a reduction in their exercise with no walk to/from school, no PE, no break time, no after school clubs etc. they're just not wearing themselves out enough to be sleepy at the right time. We had similar problems with 8yo.