To start a thread where you can only share absolute genius hacks for getting through lockdown working with kids or other responsibilities.

[Amithetoxicone]

The best one I have is you set a timer for ten minutes and they have to stay in their rooms for ten minutes and tidy between five and ten things away. You go in after ten minutes and if you can guess what’s gone then you get a point and if you can’t they get a point.

Disney+ and headphones.
Xbox and headphones.
Books, books, books, books
Dot to dot books
Kids wordsearches and sudoku

Tbh, if the next lot of online learning is more crap via the seesaw app that DD can finish in no time at all I will make sure she does it at a time convenient to all of us and to hang with it.

Here is what got us through lockdown in winter in Melbourne with 2 parents WFH (yes I know there are far too many screen based activities):

Kids online classes - art, yoga, computer programming etc, some free, eg via council or library.

Dance 2020 game. I let them earn dessert if they did 30mins minimum.

If you have an instrument they can play, and an iPad, try Yousician which gameifys learning.

Let them do school work while on Zoom with a friend, keeps them engaged, allows collaborative thinking.

Regular after school Zoom chat with friend/s. Good for mental health and amazing that they can entertain themselves for 1-2 hours this way.

Weekly Houseparty app session with group of friends.

We also had weekly Zoom session with simultaneous Mario Kart on Switch Consoles with cousins.

Children also now fully trained to get themselves snacks and make sandwiches.

dc 5 got a globe for Christmas just a cheap one but she's being asking for it so plan is to find a country each day then she can ask alexa for fun facts/information about that country.

@omg35

One of my school mum friends told her kids she'd give whichever of them went longest sitting quietly on the carpet not bothering her would get a pound. Her 9yo managed 4 hours

What a tightarse!

minecraft. and then some more minecraft. Also some reading + an exercise bike.

I work, they stay quiet. The threat of removing minecraft time if they cause trouble is also helpful!

@farandfew

Tell them they're the teacher and they have to come up with an exam for you. It has to be X pages, Y topics long etc etc. They have to work out the answers and make an answer sheet so they can mark it later.

It should take them a while to make, be fairly quick for you to do based on the level, and then they have to take time to mark it

Brilliant- I'm going to do this with my 7 year old!

@parietal

minecraft. and then some more minecraft. Also some reading + an exercise bike.

I work, they stay quiet. The threat of removing minecraft time if they cause trouble is also helpful!

🤣🤣

Some great ideas on here - thank you!

Houseparty & zoom allowed for socialising/working with friends during lessons: has made all the difference as the dcs are much more engaged when they can do their work with friends.

All 3 dcs now trained to do proper housework. Split the rooms and chores out each week and everyone cracks on with it for an hour every day (eg Monday is toilets and sinks, Tuesday showers / bath, Wednesday hoovering, Thursday dusting and floor washing etc); rotate the allocation every week to keep it fair. Bless them, they’ve taken to it surprisingly well, and it takes up a good whack of time. Plus they make far less mess when they know how much effort it takes to clear up!

Sharing the cooking. Admittedly this is harder when I’m balancing 8-9 hours of meetings, but getting the dcs to plan a meal each for during the week and then cook it themselves (or at least mostly), and then the other 2 do the washing up, is resulting in some fairly edible meals and, like the cleaning, feels like a major long term investment too.

Zooming the oldies. We have a rota for calling aunties, uncles, grandparents etc, which keeps everyone quite happy and busy.

Brushing, walking, washing the dog. Never gets boring, and the washing and brushing are always essential after a walk at this time of year!

Bookcase in the hall became 'the snack station'. So every day I'd put out a different selection of crackers, crisps, fruits, biscuits, chocolate, etc (within reason) that they could help themselves to without bothering me. If it was on the snack station, they knew it was ok to eat between meals.

The other one was buying carpet stain remover. For some reason they both became obsessed with using the Dr Beckmann stain remover that comes with a brush attached. There was something really satisfying for them in seeing the stains vanish. Plus it was one less thing for me to have to do in terms of housework

I still make up the packed lunches, saves the hassle the next day if I'm in the middle of something or stuck in meetings. They can just grab from the fridge.

Prodigy Game - my DC are obsessed with it. It's a bit like Pokémon, but with maths. I think my lot would play it all day if I let them!

Kinder egg hunts in their bedroom.
Yoga kids on YouTube
Get them to design, make and script a puppet show for the evening (any type of puppet; we have used socks, forks and egg cartons).
Commission an outdoor collage (,when the weather is better).

I am stealing the chore list idea.

We had a timetable and stuck to it. If both parents were in meetings we would leave alarms on Alexa to say when their breaktime was up and they needed to do different school activities, and then when they could stop and have another break.

I also have a colour code for how much they can interrupt a meeting I'm in - green for an internal meeting where they can pop in, Amber for a meeting with external professionals where they can only disturb me if it's important, red for if I'm in court or similar and they can only come in if someone is hurt or in danger.

The other one was buying carpet stain remover. For some reason they both became obsessed with using the Dr Beckmann stain remover that comes with a brush attached. There was something really satisfying for them in seeing the stains vanish. Plus it was one less thing for me to have to do in terms of housework

This is amazing! It really amuses me the strange things children really love!

Old school but we have a reward chart

Points awarded for doing chores (set number points per task)
Doing your schoolwork
And at parental discretion for other good behaviour

They chose their own rewards money, sweets and screen time

It worked a fair bit.
Mine have always been suckers for a reward chart and they compete to get the most points so that makes it work better (Clearly I manipulate it)

We also let them come up with family rules that we all have to abide by. I had an idea it would work better if they had input. Might be true. Some of the suggested rules were quite interesting Eg No screens at mealtime (they asked for that and for us parents to abide by that DH often in his phone at dinner)

I mean I don't have any amazing hacks but these were our least shit ideas.

Giving up on it some days and just going with wall to wall screen time did also happen.

Not sure my commitment to dry January is going to survive this

These are great.

Best I can think of is kid swop - you pick your mates kids up and have them for 3 hours, they do the same for you. Outdoors of course

Get them into skirting board cleaning

This is all getting quite Viz like

Omfg that exam idea

Make packed lunches in the morning. Means you don’t get interrupted in calls for snacks/drinks etc.

Plan ahead for the day. You can’t expect the kids to be quiet for hours each day, but if you have say a meeting/calls at certain times then make clear they can’t interrupt you, and get them doing an activity before the start, but be realistic, frankly if you can’t be interrupted use screens.

Ignore social media the Instagram posts/Facebook with #makingmemories#lovemyfam

Mute the school WhatsApp group for the same reason.

I am loving make your own packed lunches and snack station and colour code on my door for interrupting
(Maybe that would have saved me from the time I yelled 'will you lot bloody shut up' at the kids but had forgotten to mute. My colleagues did impressively shut up too before pissing themselves laughing)

My dsis had a good one a bit like snack station. Her DC had a snack box and had to choose their snack allocation for the day at the start and then they can have that whenever they like but only that. Avoids constant snacking but also constant asking for snacks.

Give them a diary and ask them to fill in all the festivals from different cultures around the world on the day they happen along with a story (most celebrations have stories attached to them) and traditions and recipes for food eaten at these celebrations and then as they happen cook the dishes, make the crafts and read the stories. Chinese New Year is in feb this year and is full of things to do and raises cultural awareness as well as food, geography etc.

Tell them they can watch tv until they disturb you - after that no more tv (always worked for me when I wanted a nap).

Love this one. My tip is to use procrastination to your advantage. Send them upstairs to get dressed - guaranteed to buy at least 30min while they find all sorts of other things to do. Likewise with tidying bedroom / clearing out of toys.

We did a tuck shop, so at 10.30 when they had a break if they were "good" they could take their fake money to the tuck shop to chose their snack.
One of mine hates writing but if he did it on a whiteboard he was more engaged.

I think someone else might have mentioned this but printing out copious amounts of colouring / mazes / netts / activity sheets from the internet (kids know how to search and print it themselves)

You tube step by step drawing videos are great

Hama beads (can look up patterns on internet)

Lots and lots of vaguely educational apps so you don’t feel quite as bad about the sheer amount of screen time (we let kids have educational screen time separately from whatever app you want scree time)

That exam paper idea is bloody genius.