Unfortunately, despite wishing every weekend could be full of non-stop play and family togetherness, we inevitably find ourselves using at least a portion of the weekend to do chores and jobs around the house. Our Saturdays usually include multiple loads of washing, vacuuming, cooking and general tidying up.
There are times that we engage the children to help with various household chores and there are also some jobs that we'd prefer to do as efficiently as possible, to quickly get it out of the way so that we can move onto more pleasurable weekend tasks. This isn't always easy with young children following you around, clinging onto your leg, hounding you for food or entertainment or trying to "help" in their own unique ways. Having a few
independent activities (they're things your children can do without adult assistance) up your sleeve, can be very handy indeed.
When it comes to
setting your kids up with an independent inside activity, you need to take into consideration their
age and abilities. With younger children, activities that involve materials with a high likelihood of mess, like paint, water-play, rice etc. are probably best saved for a time when you can be more actively supervising. You also want to make sure that the activities are
open-ended enough to allow for multiple experiences and
self explanatory enough so the kids don't need long instructions or help figuring out what or how to do something.
Below are some of my
favourite go-to independent activity ideas for kids.
Busy Boxes
A
busy box is something that you make ahead of time so you can grab and give to a child quickly when needed. It is something that children wouldn't normally have access to and is just reserved for times when you need it. The draw of a busy box is the excitement of rummaging through a box of
endless possibilities for creating. They stimulate children's minds as they go through the process of evaluating the materials and options and deciding how they are going to combine and use them.
You could provide children with a
recycle box challenge (minus the paint for younger children), encourage writing and drawing with a
writing box, set them up with a
quiet box, a
playdough train box, some
busy bags, a
lego patterns box, a
portable road kit or a
sight words busy box.
After your child has used a particular busy box or bag, it's fun to add new and interesting materials to keep it fresh and to entice them on other occasions.
Play-dough Invitations
So long as you have some
playdough and some
bits and bobs, you can entice a long session of
creative, sensory play that isn't going to require your assistance. If you have older children who feel that playdough just isn't for them anymore, you could offer modelling clay as an alternative.
Chances are, the overall excitement of say, playdough paired with cookie cutters, will lose it's appeal over time as all the options for play are exhausted. Changing and swapping around the playdough's accompanying materials provides children with different experiences and different options for creating (and learning).
Some tested and well-loved combinations are things like
playdough and magnetic letters,
playdough with pompoms and pinecones, a
playdough spring garden or
playdough with pipe-cleaners and beads.
Add some blocks in this fun
playdough bricklaying activity or set up a
playdough sweet shop or
pizza shop. You can even add some cotton-buds for a
challenging construction activity.
Pairing your playdough with a
playdough mat is also a quick and easy idea. You might like to try this
flower playdough mat, this
food playdough mat, these
alphabet playdough mats or these
people playdough mats.
Construction Activities
My children love
building things and with just a few different materials, can be busily constructing away for ages. We have a variety of different blocks at our house, from standard wooden blocks to castle and tree blocks. We also have
Duplo and Lego that we use often for constructing and playing with.
Beyond just building with the blocks, there are lots of different ideas sure to engage your children. Try pairing
tape with blocks to see what you can come up with or engineering with
toothpicks and marshmallows. Give children some
books and cars or
cardboard boxes. We also love to
build with plastic plates and cups.
Contact Paper Activities
Contact paper or sticky-back plastic, is a great low-mess medium for all kinds of fun, independent activities for children. The sticky side of the plastic allows for easy collaging, creating and learning opportunities. A
sticky-wall, sticky-table or
sticky-easel is quick and easy to set up by simply peeling the backing off a large sheet of contact paper, and attaching (with some tape in the corners) to your surface, with the
sticky side up. You're left with an instant reusable sticky surface that is perfect for younger kids.
Try presenting their sticky surface with materials like
ribbons and string or
craft sticks and straws to see what they come up with. You can add cardboard tubes and marbles to make a
marble run or
these to inspire a garden like in the picture above. Stick some eyes onto bottle-tops for a fun
sticky caterpillar game or try some
contact paper art. Did you know you can pair
contact paper with blocks?
You could give younger children some
wool to stick, make gorgeous
mandalas or design yourself some
cool bracelets or cuffs. Here are
even more ideas for using contact paper for play.
Role Play
Another great independent activity for children is
imaginative play. When we were kids, we could get lost in our role plays for hours and hours and the great thing is that we needed very few materials and just a lot of imagination. To entice children to get into role playing at a time you're needing them to be independently occupied, providing a few pre-prepared materials could be the ticket.
Getting out a couple of
props or dress-ups and putting them out for children to find, will often be enough to entice them. The more effort I go to setting the scene, the more enthused they usually are. (I'm talking things like hand-written signs you can quickly stick on the wall, a little table moved into the centre of a room with a chair behind it or a couple of house-hold items they may not play with regularly. All these little things add to their enthusiasm but you don't need to spend a lot of time or effort on it.)
Some ideas for role play set-ups are
Doctor role play (there's a free printable Dr check-list for you there),
pretend school,
shop keepers,
pretend Vets,
pretend school,
pretend travel,
ice cream shop owners,
office play or that you're
going camping! If you're after more inspiration, here are
tons of pretend play printables.
Technology
There are plenty of
benefits of technology for kids and so long as you've established a way to
control kids' technology use (so they don't have unrestricted, unsupervised access to the internet or games), some computer or tablet time can be perfect for an independent activity while you get the ironing done. Currently on the ipad, the kids and I are loving discovering and learning with the amazing
MWorld, making up stories on the
Play School Art Maker and exploring the interactive
Play School Play Time app.
There has to be enough ideas there to at least buy you a few Saturday's worth of chores. What are your go-to independent activities for the kids?
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