Lockdown Activity Ideas

At the beginning of lockdown I saw a number of post about lockdown activity ideas and more recently these seem to be less abundant. So, I though now would be a good time to share some fresh ideas for activities using items you will most likely already have at home or are easy to come by. Hopefully you will find something here that you, and your children, have not seen before and will enjoy having a go at something new.

• Number cards and pegs – This is a very simple idea and easy to adapt for children of differing ages stages of development. Simply cut out some card in to the shape of numbers and ask the children to attach the corresponding number of pegs to each of the cards. Aside from the obvious mathematical element of this activity the children will also be developing fine motor control by using their fingers to open the pegs.
  This activity can be easily adjusted in to a shape or colour matching activity by cutting the card in to shapes rather than numbers and by using different coloured card. You can draw the different shape on to the pegs or apply some colour to them for the children to match them to the appropriate card colours/shapes.
• Dinosaur Island – Using a tray and some brown parcel paper you can easily create a fun playground for any dinosaur! Simply cover the tray with some parcel paper and then, to make some trees, roll some of the paper up in to long tubes. Make some small cuts around the bottom of the rolls so they can be folded outwards and stuck to the paper covered tray with some sticky tape. Then make some larger cuts in the other end of the roll, to around half way down the tube and let the strands of paper fall to create the branches of a tree. The dinosaur playground can be added to with some stones form outside as rocks, some tin foil for a lake.
• Threading Cheerios – This is a great activity for developing hand-eye coordination and is really easy to set up. All you need is some playdough or plasticine, a few strands of uncooked spaghetti and some Cheerios breakfast cereal. Simply push the spaghetti strands in to the playdough/plasticine so they are sticking upright and ask your child to thread the Cheerios on to the spaghetti. You can then extend the activity by creating repeating patterns with the different coloured Cheerios.
• Listening/looking walk – It is so important to get outside and get some fresh air and this is a great opportunity to help your child to tune in to their environment. Listen/look out for different things on your walks, you could even make a list of different things to look/listen for to tick off. Some ideas are, a bus, a tree with brown leaves, a tree with green leaves, a bird singing, a red car, an aeroplane, white flowers, a worm, a squirrel.
• Milk and food colouring experiment – this is a really good activity to get children to predict what they think will happen. You will need some milk, 3 or 4 different colours of liquid food colouring and some washing up liquid. Pour some milk in to a deep oven tray, it doesn’t need to be too deep, then choose one of the colours of food colouring and add a few drops on to the surface of the milk and observe what happens. Encourage your child to describe what is happening. Repeat this with each of the different colours asking your child what they think will happen. Once each of the colours of food colouring have been added introduce a few drops of washing up liquid and see what happens!!
• Drawing with cars – does you child love cars and all things with wheels? You can use this activity to spark their interest in mark making. Find some of their favourite cars/vehicles and use some sticky tape to attach felt tip pens or pencils on to the car so that when they run the car over some paper the pen/pencil will leave a mark.
• Painting the garden with water – this is another easy mark making activity that is great for dry days. Fill up a small bucket with some water and provide your child with some paint brushes of different sizes. They can paint the water on to the fence, the ground or the shed and the marks they make will simply disappear as they dry.
• Bubble snakes – This is an activity best done outside. You will need a small, empty plastic bottle, an old child’s sock, an elastic band and some washing up liquid. Cut the bottom off of the plastic bottle, slide the sock over the hole you have created and secure it in place with the elastic band. Mix some washing up liquid with a small amount of water and dip the sock covered end of the bottle in to the mixture. Blow in to the bottle and watch your bubble snake appear!

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