During the social distancing process we go through due to Coronavirus (COVID-19), we have compiled activities that can be done with children using what we have in our homes!
We’ve compiled the best screen-free activities for kids; you don’t need to buy a lot of fancy, expensive stuff, and you don’t need a complicated setup! You just need to look at the materials available at home. You probably already have all the materials you need to entertain your children. This guide encourages and promotes mathematical, literary, scientific and social study skills and concepts related to imagination, creativity and problem solving that your children will miss in the next few weeks. These activities, which you can do with materials you can find in your home, are important for developing fine motor skills such as cutting, painting and colouring, as well as being a creative art project for children. We share with you the materials and step-by-step activity details below.
1. Homemade Moon Sand
This game is both creative and made from materials available at anytime in your home!
Materials:
– 4 cups of flour
– 1 teacup baby oil or any liquid oil
– Powder food dye (you do not need to use food dye, if you are not at home, no problem to have colorless sand)
Preparation:
– Put the flour in a large bowl.
– Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of food dye over it.
– Add oil and stir.
– Your sand is ready when it gets moist and consistent enough to easily give shape.
– A large, deep container in the house or a cover can be chosen for use. If you keep it in a closed container the sand will not dry, you can also reuse the next game.
– If you color the moon sand with food dyes according to the type of game you play, you will create a more impressive setup. For example, in a space game, if you pour some glitter into the gray sand, you can get a glistening space. You can also make use of home cookie molds or sand toys that are used on the beach in summer. You get a lot of shapes with these. It suffices if your sand remains moist enough to be shaped.
2. Homemade Bowling
Materials:
– 5-6 Half-Liter Water Bottles
– One Ball
Take 5-6 half-liter bottles and fill up them with water about halfway. Try to knock them over by rolling the ball from a distance. The water bottles will function as pins, and you’ll be having a bowling tournament.
3. Bottle Maracas
Materials:
– 2 Plastic Bottles
– Small pebbles, beans and rice grains
– Paper Tape
– Colored Pencils
Wash and dry the plastic bottles. Allow your child to fill the plastic bottle with materials of her/his choice. Talk about the sounds that pebbles, beans and rice grains will create in maracas while making this choice. Close the lid and allow your child to cover the bottle with paper tape and decorate the top of the bottle as desired.
4. Maracas From Toilet Paper Tube
It is possible to design a simple and fun musical instrument using recycled materials!
Materials:
– Toilet Paper Tube
– Colored Paper
– Glue
– Pen
– Dry pasta, beans, lentils or rice
Set the toilet paper roll on the colored paper. Carefully use a pencil to draw the dimensions of the tube on paper. Let your child cut out the long sections of colored paper along your penciled lines. Glue the colored paper on the toilet paper tube. Encourage your child to draw and cut out fun shapes, patterns, designs, and fringes from other sheets of colored paper. Help your child make “caps” for her homemade maraca out of the colored paper. The caps should be slightly larger than the paper tube openings. Put a small amount of glue around one end of the paper tube. Place one cap gently over the glued end and let it dry shortly. Let your child add beans, pasta or rice into the paper tube. Glue the cap on the other end. Wait for the maraca to dry. Your child can give the maraca shake and enjoy sounds!
5. Family Chain
A creative activity that encourages writing!
Materials:
-Colorful Cardboard
-Ruler
-Scissors
-Colored Pencil, Marker
-Glue
-Latch
A line is drawn with the aid of ruler and pen. The name of family members and relatives are written on the line. The line is passed through the other line and glued. It is hung on a rope with latch and left to dry. The child decides the length of the family chain. This activity can also be done at home using the names of family members under the heading “my family”.
6. Coasters Made From Waste Paper
Except for paper, perhaps no material can be recycled so easily and in such a wide variety! Therefore, always remove used paper from the trash. Especially Papers, newspapers, magazines can be a rich source material for a coaster or frame that you create with their colorful contents.
7. Another Painting!
Allow children to paint bubble wraps or potatoes, bell peppers in the kitchen and show their skills stamping on paper bags. You can design a new t-shirt by creating patterns on an old t-shirt. Children can also have fun by tying bubble wrap to their feet and walking on a white floor!
8. Is There Any Toilet Paper or Towel Paper Left?
When you have run out of toilet paper and paper towels, store the remaining cardboard tubes. Adhere the tubes onto the wall with colored tapes, if any, and roll puffs, little balls over the maze layout you’ve created.
9. What do I Draw?
Start drawing any object on a piece of paper; like the front bumper or rear wheel of a car, the outside stairs of a house, a small sprout of a tree, the stalk of a flower, the drawer of a desk etc. Ask your child what the picture that you have just started drawing is. And keep drawing until you get the right answer. You can also ask her/him to complete the picture or create a story about it.
10. It’s a Great Time to Wash Toys!
Let your children wash their plastic toys. You can add non-tearing bubbles, sponges, towels and other materials.
11. Morning Ritual: Creative Reading!
Children are natural storytellers. Have you ever noticed how much detail and imagination they put into the stories they share while playing games? Let’s build the daily routine on this basis and incorporate some literacy skills into the day. Creative reading enables them to experience the story in an experimental way by asking, questioning, reading and accompanying the reader-oriented, text-oriented, visual-oriented components with active dialogue. Creative reading is a cognitive activity including steps that point to many gains, such as understanding the adventure of reading, seeing behind the text, finding the reward in the child’s own life.
Start your day with books!
Books are usually recorded in memory before bedtime and are the preparer of a beautiful, quality sleep. These days, when we have plenty of time in the morning, you can create some fun times before you get up, to curl up for some favorite stories, browse through pictures of fun family times (holidays, ice cream, holiday visits), and recreate the story of those moments in your memory.
12. Experiment Time!
You can do experiments that show children where viruses accumulate and multiply faster. As an example of the following experiment, you can explain to your child how contact plays a major role in the reproduction of viruses; you can warn her/him that we need to avoid contact as much as possible during this process.
Potato Experiment
Materials:
- Potatoes
- A pair of gloves
- Knife
- Four locked plastic bags
- Adhesive tape
- Marker
- Wash your hands, put on your gloves and divide the potato into four equal parts.
- Take the first piece of potato with your hand, put it in a locked bag, seal the bag. Use the marker to write on the adhesive tape and label this bag as “control.”
- Pick a surface – such as a countertop, sink, or a floor – and while wearing the gloves, rub the second potato piece on it. Place the potato slice in a bag and seal the bag. Label it with the surface it contacted.
- Lay the third potato piece in a puddle or flower pad. Place it in a bag, seal the bag, label it with the area it contacted.
- After spinning the last piece as if it were a bar of soap in your bare hands, put it into a locked bag and write “Touched with Hands” on the bag.
- Take all four bags and place them in a dark area at room temperature. Leave them there for a week. After a week, examine the potatoes inside the bags. (Do not take any potatoes out and do not touch them).
- At the end of a week, you will see some changes in all the bags, such as black, green or white stains. But you can observe the piece of potato that you have put into the Control bag together with a pair of gloves has changed the least ! The potato pieces that were handled by you, rubbed on a surface and placed outside probably had the most germ growth on them. Because potatoes attract all the germs from these surfaces, but those potatoes that have the least contact with the surface have a very small growth of germs.