It’s week 2 of our Under 5s Isolation Challenges! This week is another 4 day week starting Tuesday after the Easter long weekend.
The idea of the Isolation Challenges is to give you some more structure to your day and some things to do with your kids while at home. There are a lot of ideas on the internet and Pinterest but most of us can’t be bothered to set out a plan……well, we’ve done that for you! We will be posting regularly in the Hills District Mums Facebook group and on our HDM Facebook page and we would love you to add your photos to the feed. We will then pull together some collages to inspire people and bring some joy to our lives!
We’ve listed out 3 challenges a day. You could do one in the morning, one at lunch and then one in the afternoon. We try to mainly use things that you can find around the house but maybe just flick through the list of activities to check if you need to grab anything extra in your next essential shop.
If you haven’t already signed up to receive these Isolation Challenges directly via email click here to sign up.
Here’s a summary of the days and further below are the details.
TUESDAY:
- Recycling construction
- Outdoor colour scavenger hunt
- Play “The Lava” game
WEDNESDAY:
- COVID-19 keepsake
- Movement scavenger hunt
- Do a gym class with The Little Gym Dural
THURSDAY:
- Build a road and city
- Water play (it’s meant to be warm! Fingers crossed.)
- Roll the dice exercise
FRIDAY:
- Outdoor nature hunt
- Nature art – fairy, person or lion
- Do a workout with Joe
TUESDAY
Recycling
Let your kids go wild with the recycling. Cereal boxes, egg cartons, snack boxes, toilet rolls, paddle pop sticks and tape. Even Easter egg wrappers make pretty decorations. Create a tower or any kind of structure. Just give them a pile of things to work with and some tape and let them create!
It doesn’t need to be pretty or make sense, it just needs to keep them occupied!
Outdoor colour scavenger hunt
Kids love hunting for things. Either get your child to collect the things they find or you could let them take photos on your phone once they find them. Or a combination of the two! You might want to make up a chart with colours on it similar to below making colour matching easy and fun for your child.
The Lava game
Our kids love the lava game and it can be played inside or out. And you can pretty much sit still while they wear themselves out!!
The adult calls out the following: “Carpet is lava…….in 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1” or “Grass is lava……..in 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1” and the kids have to move to the place so they’re not standing on the place you called lava. They have 5 seconds to do so. And then repeat.
When you run out of ideas for that you can call out “Everything is lava except for XXX…….in 5 – 4 – 3 -2 -1”. You can really get them running and climbing in this one. We love the “Everything is lava except upstairs”, to get them running upstairs or “Everything is lava except your bedroom” to get them running to the other end of the house.
WEDNESDAY
COVID-19 keepsake
We are living through what will become history right now! We’ll all remember this time so why not create a keepsake as a physical reminder. One idea is a family handprint tree. Here are some instructions.
There’s a post doing the rounds on Facebook with the idea of salt dough handprints. The ingredients are 500g plain flour, 250g salt, 250ml water. Mix into a dough, roll out then press handprints into dough. Bake in oven on lowest temp for 3-4 hours. Paint then varnish to seal.
You could also ask your child to paint a family portrait or a self portrait. Record facts about them (age, height etc) and what their favourite things are right now.
Movement scavenger hunt
This one can be done indoors or outdoors. Once they have found the items/places to do these movements on get them to turn it into an obstacle course.
Do a gym class with The Little Gym Dural
The Little Gym Dural has created the Little Gym at Home! They will release weekly videos in their Facebook Group which can be found here.
If your child is aged under 3 years this is the video for you – it’s a parent and child class. Click here to access it.
If your child is aged 3 – 6 years this is the video for you. Click here to access it.
THURSDAY
Build a road and a city
A word of warning – this one could take up an entire day and become a permanent fixture in your living room for weeks! Let’s cross fingers it gives them hours of independent play! Again, let them use their imagination. Based on the way cases of wine and cartons of beer are flying out the door maybe you could make a box road. Or even just use butcher’s paper.
Credit: busytoddler.com
If you want to keep it contained you could use tape and make a road on a table.
Source: Pinterest
Water play
At the time of publishing this article it’s meant to be hot on Thursday! Make the most of it, Winter is just around the corner. There’s nothing like water play to keep kids occupied. Here are some ideas including a dolly bath station, laundry day and window art!
Roll the dice exercise
On a piece of paper assign each number from 1–6 a movement or action. Have your child roll a dice and perform the task assigned to the corresponding number. You can make it basic – roll a 5 and do 20 star jumps but we find if you make it active but silly you get the best results. It won’t be such a chore! A few fun ones to try:
- Jump like a kangaroo from one end of the house to the other
- Squat and waddle like a duck up the hallway
- Crab crawl backwards around the edge of your backyard or the room
- Commando crawl for 15 seconds
For extra fun, use 2 dice and assign movements to one die (running, jumping, etc), and animals to the other. Roll them both and your kids will be “slithering like a monkey”, “hopping like a fish” or “skipping like an elephant” amidst fits of laughter.
FRIDAY
Outdoor nature hunt
The nature treasure hunt and the flower fairy or leaf lion art challenges fit together today. You start out by going on a nature treasure hunt. Arm yourselves with a bucket or basket and head out to the garden to collect. Flowers in full bloom are really pretty and Autumn leaves are also a great idea. In fact, you can pretty much use anything. This part is really fun to do together.
Flower fairy nature art, head art or leaf lion
Our kids had fun doing this during the week. They used the items they collected in the garden to create art. All they needed were the nature materials and some glue and sticky tape. Here are a couple of ideas.
Fairy Art – click here for detailed instructions and printable
Head art – click here for detailed instructions and printable
We saw that twinkl.com.au had a cool one where they got a template of a lions head and stuck autumn leaves around it. Click here for details.
Do a workout with Joe
There are heaps to chose from and different lengths. Click here to access Joe’s YouTube channel.
Other articles that may interest you…..
- Under 5s Isolation Challenges | 6 April
- Occupying little ones with independent activities
- Stay at home ideas to keep kids busy
