Aibu to have completely and utterly ran out of ideas to entertain kids

[Boredombored]

I’ve got nothing. Still in lockdown and I’ve got to entertain kids for the next four weeks. I’ve completely ran out of ideas. Help me good people. I can’t spend any money either so we are talking pooh sticks Or colouring in stones with nail varinish levels of entertainment. Help! Give me your best ideas please otherwise they are just going to watch tv

My 6 yo DD likes

• exploring, I give her a list of things to find in the garden like a leaf with an interesting pattern, a really round rock... or if it's an indoor day things like a Lego person who looks like a doctor, a barbie with a poorly foot who needs rescuing.

• making barbie/Lol doll clothes out of balloons or scraps of fabric, loads of YouTube videos on how to do this.

• bluetack sheets of cheap lining/craft roll paper to the wall and have her 'decorate' her room. On sunny days tape several strips together outside so it makes a huge square on the floor and let her loose with poster paints. Make sure it's warm enough to rinse down outside.

• trampoline, sandpit, paddling pool

• cooking with me/DH, if we are working and need her to entertain herself a bit then we set her up at the kitchen table with all the constituent parts for marshmallow squares, tiffin/refrigerator cake, cornflake cakes and let her crack on. We do the melting/heating bits then leave her to mix all the rest up, make a huge mess and squish it into cases/tins.

• weirdly she loves doing the washing up and can make it a 30 minute activity so we just fill the bowl, take away any sharp things and let her get on with cleaning the pots 😁

• playmobil is usually pretty good for an hour or so of role play

• get the Alexa on and let her choose songs, she likes to close the curtains, out fairy lights on and throw and impromptu disco

• set up scenes and take photos using Barbies/lol dolls as the characters and her kindle fire

And if all else fails, stick the TV on and accept that screen time is just a bigger part of life in lockdown (we're in Leicester so besides walking round the park and looking forlornly at the play equipment we can't use there really isn't much to do)

Ah yes @minipie. I’ve often started a puzzle, had to go off to be busy somewhere else and the dcs have ended up doing the puzzle.

Treasure hunts and escape room style puzzles keep mine entertained for a bit, and if it goes well, they sometimes try to design their own for me.

Paper games like Beetle (the one where you roll a dice and draw beetle head//legs/body - they like the version where you draw as many heads etc as possible) and consequences keeps them busy too, although you have to play together a few times before sneaking off for some peace and quiet while they get on with it

OP if you have space get a huge. Box eg washing machine size (covid) allowing and get the DCs to decorate- we Cut one side do it opened & made a caravan, they painted it inside & out, it lasted over a year. Also order some modelling balloons - loads online tutorials & easy to make swords, flowers & sausage dog things - or blow up and let the air out noisily or let them zoom round the room- hours of silliness

@Smallsteps88

Start at the beginning of your list and do it all again

👏🏼

Mine would play for ages with their friends but sadly don’t get on well with each other at all. Lockdown was very challenging! These are things that have worked for us:

They love hide and seek or finding things I’ve hidden.

Hide and seek is fab because you can take ages ‘looking’ for them whilst tidying up a bit as you go and if you find a really good hiding place yourself you get a few minutes peace!

Indoor or outdoor scavenger hunts- and to prevent piles of stuff accumulating they have to show each item and then put it away before I tick it off the list

Making perfume from random petals and herbs in the garden. The other day they named and made labels for their creations which took up more time

Drawing tutorials on you tube

Face paints and nail painting

FaceTime with friends or grandparents

Setting up a zoo /dinosaur world with toys then filming a tour To send to their cousins (actually-filming anything to send to their cousins was usually successful)

I dig and hide small packets of haribo in the Flower beds and they spend ages trying to find them!
Chalking the patio
Deweeding garden
Extra school work 😬
Can they make up their own show- singing/dancing to perform you you or others on facetime?

Are you able to go outside the house or garden at all? So bike rides etc

Look online for the Big Butterfly count. They do an annual census of butterflies across the UK by getting children and adults to count the butterflies in their garden or local area for half an hour. They provide the resources for identification.

Things I did with my 6 year old during lockdown :
Swap toys around ( keep some in the shed in a box that comes out on nice days to play with in the garden)
Nature trails
Playing with water on nice days - put washing up bowl / bucket and spade / watering can out the garden and let him crack on
Box of crafts with an old shower curtain protecting the floor
Baking / cooking together- then writing up the recipe for a scrap book
Earning pocket money for helping with chores
We unfortunately had to cancel our holiday so using that money to do one big outing per week and the rest of the time doing things like the above .
There is always the park and walking / scooting to the shops
Or my favourite one - visiting nanny ! Lol

I used to do 'theme' days - is a French day with croissants for breakfast, researching a bit about France, cooking crepes, art work themed to France, word searches (make your own, details on line) etc etc, you get the idea ... could go round the world doing that.

Endless board games.

Weeding

Making Christmas cards

Sorting out their rooms, de-cluttering

All else fails and they complain of being bored ....school work & reading.

Get a selection of board games out. Play a couple.

Teach them cards. Patience, rummy, brag.

Who can build the tallest lego tower?

Make cakes.

Clean their rooms.

Readathon.

Set up some toys. So get the playmobil out and add the animals. Set up the cars.

Get masking tape and string. In the hallway make a maze by sticking the string to the walls at angles and make it like a laser beam that they have to navigate. Do some low and some high.

Pick flowers from the garden and press them to make greeting cards.

Some great ideas on here. Mine are similar ages. I know they don’t “need” entertained, but they had several months of very little attention from me as I was working through lockdown. Now I’ve got time with them I want to actually do stuff, but it’s hard to remember how!
Another great one is “pairing the socks”. I keep all our oddbods in a box and then get it out on rainy days. Competition to see who can make the most matches!
Beetle drive is also good as is domino run.
Will keep watching for more ideas!

When we were kids mum asked us what we wanted to do over the summer holidays and we came up with all sorts of random stuff. Some of which we couldn't really do so we got as close as possible e.g we said we wanted to go fishing so we took a bucket to a nearby stream and then tried catching dirt and leaves. We also took a ball and played games with that.

Another favourite was getting books from the mobile library and choosing what we liked.

YES making Christmas cards. DS1 has just announced it is 150 days till Christmas tomorrow 😂

Teaching my 7 year old to tie shoe laces kept him entertained for absolutely ages. He went off and practiced over and over again quietly once I'd showed him a few times

Ours are the same age more or less (5 and 7) and they just don't have screens. They get watch TV every couple of weeks or so but not to any routine and mostly educational shows, it stops all the moaning and dependence on screens.

Child.org has some great printable treasure hunts for round the house. I did the Harry Potter one today with my boys and they loved it. There’s a pirate one, under the sea one. £5 well spent

A survey of cars going up our road was billed as ds's best day ever!

Do you have pintrest? If not I would recommend loads of good ideas. I would try and get them out for walks, mini beast hunt, butterfly spotting, scavenger hunts ( nature detectives has print outs), collecting things to make nature art, collect stones to paint, make a fairy garden .Freeze little figures in ice and they have to chip at them to find the treassure inside, treassure hunt in the garden, someone I know made their own sort of trail with clues around local area ( i am planning to do this). Make salt dough , cloud dough, own playdoh. Simple science experimenrs( pinterest is good for this) , writing letters to friends/ families. Making new crayons with old scraps and a mould, tie dyeing old clothes, we found some old mosaics and my son has made some. If you have any old pans ect my little one loves playing mud kitchen with pans , old utensils ect. Lots of water play with bubbles and food colouring.

I don't know how 'lockdowned' you still are but our local Pick Your Own is now open, you can spend a good couple of hours in the fresh air digging and picking stuff with them.

@katy1213

This hasn’t been a 5 week holiday though, it’s been 4 months! 🙄

Pack a picnic, go to a biggish forrest/common etc. find sticks, build dens and make pretend (!!!) campfires. make beds out of grass and bark in the den. will entertyfir several hours, we do it most weekends.
Go “rockpooling” in whatever little stream you can find. take a big bucket and some small ones, and notebooks. tgey can write/draw what they find, collect flowers and leaves and press them later on

Print out a map if a local park, common etc. Before you print, do some “x marks the spot” locations on it. then find these in real life. Take some fancy stones etc with you, hide them when the kids are not looking. Find said stones, clean them up (and a million more they’ll find) and make a rock display at home
Find pinecones etc, and paint themat home. they make awesome birds, hedgehogs etc

Get them to help you fold and put away the washing
Make a fruit salad and eat it
Make pikelets
Can you do borrow my doggy ( assuming you don’t have one of your own)
Get a old roll of wallpaper, get them to lie down and trace round them. Then get them to paint on their faces and clothes
Paper doll chains
Utube exercise classes or yoga aimed at kids
One holidays we tried every kind of cheese we could think of eg Gouda Edam feta etc and rated them. A new one every couple of days
Would you rather game eg would you rather be able to fly or be invisible? Make up your own
If at a loss then go outside. With young kids just getting outside seems to make things better