Do you notice yourself feeling easily irritable and restless? Stressed out with your children’s antics? And your children have been complaining that they are feeling bored out of their minds after days (or has it been weeks) of being cooped up at home despite having them doing simple chores and virtual school are in session? It is challenging times for parents who are working from home and have children with energy to burn. Being stuck inside your home, no matter how cozy, can make the restriction movement order feel like forever as more countries are declaring them with the escalation of the pandemic. What about, Moms.. Dads.. we understand your feelings.. and that is why we took the liberty of coming up with these fever cabin remedies to relieve your stress away! (at least one of your stress points...)
1. Planning & scheduling daily activities
Planning and scheduling activities help your lil one adjust into new routines. Create a fancy daily activity board where your young ones can plan their daily activity. But...before you get crafty with the board parents, you need to first explain to your children why there is going to be some changes in their daily routines and discuss what they would like to do daily as well as coming to an agreement on chores, study time or accommodating to online learning hours, as more and more schools are adopting virtual classrooms to get students learning remotely.
For the younger ones, you may want to encourage them to come up with their activities but bear in mind that you would need to facilitate these activities so do ensure that they are age-appropriate and would get them learning new skills.
And YES, get your children to be creative, cheeky and informative if you wish with the daily activity board. Getting your children to design the board with you will create a sense of responsibility as they know that they will be in charge of their activities for days or weeks to come.
2. Come up with Fun Family Projects
This is a perfect time to work on those family projects that you have been putting on hold due to work. Having those extra hours at home allows for more family bonding with fun projects and that will get you and your children learning new skills. Here are some of the projects that you could do as a family.
Recycle your plastic fizzy drink bottles to make cute pot planters and plant herbs that you use in your cooking. We love these cute DIY plastic pot planters and you can regrow herbs bought from the supermarket in them. Let’s REUSE and RECYCLE!
Make a simple compost jar and teach your lil' ones how to separate their waste. Composting is a great way to introduce kids to the environment by teaching them how to convert waste into nutrient-rich soil. Children will gain an appreciation for the earth and learn about life-cycles. And it’s super easy too.
Just get your children to toss a handful of soil into a mason jar, put in a bit of newspaper and add kitchen scraps. Finally, add a layer of dead leaves and grass clippings, layering them to the top and put on the lids. Place the jars on a sunny counter indoors. Your lil ones will be in awe at how the materials break down to become soil. This nutritious soil can be added into Mom’s herb pots.
How about a themed family portrait? This is the time for the whole family to go through their wardrobes to come up with props and costumes. You would be amazed by the silly and fun costume ideas that your children can come up with. When was the last time you spent this much time with your family anyway so create an everlasting photo album that you could look back with your lil' ones. Plus, your children will just love you for it!
3. Bonding Time with Storytime
Telling stories is a wonderful way to bring the whole family together not to mention helps with passing time. Some writers are doing their part to bring the world closer together in isolation by sharing the joy of storytelling with children on their social media platforms.
Grace Lin, an illustrator and author of children novels and picture books, is posting drawing tutorials and readings from her books on her Youtube channel while Oliver Jeffers (“The Day the Crayons Quit,” “How to Catch a Star,” “The Fate of Fausto,”) is reading on Instagram Live on weekday afternoons and making all the recordings available on his site. The author behind the Jack Book and KidSpy series, Mac Barnett are also among the writers to broadcast live readings via Instagram at noon Pacific time, they are available to watch for 24 hours.
Moms and dads can tell interesting stories too with the Me Books Plus App at home. The app allows parents and children to engage in collaborative storytelling where they can record sound effects, come up with new narration and dialogues for each character in the interactive audiobook. A story new and creatively created by the whole family. Collaborative storytelling will get the whole family working together, even the toddlers want to be part of the production and it gets so much exciting when adults and children can share ideas and learn from one another. The app offers a myriad selection of interactive children audiobooks from renowned international publishing houses.
As part of their initiative to get families to stay at home and tell more stories, Me Books will be giving away free access to its library of interactive children audiobooks for three months to families in Singapore, United Kingdom, Australia, Italy and New Zealand from now until 31st May.
CODE - MBCOSAFE2020
Parents can redeem the codes at store.mebooks.co/redeem or visit https://www.mebooks.co/staystrongtogether to find out more about Me Books' initiative!
4. Have Fun with Arts and Crafts
There are so many arts and crafts activities online more than ever now to occupy our young ones who are stuck at home. The fun part about most of these crafts is that they can be made from the everyday things found in your home. Check out these suggested sites to get your children started:
This is an awesome compilation of art and craft activity sites for older children who possess basic art skills and want to expand them.
For those with aspiring young artists at home or if their children simply like to doodle then they will love children author and illustrator Mo Willems who has begun hosting doodling sessions on YouTube. His “Lunch Doodles” videos have become an instant hit with children and are streamed live every weekday at 1 p.m. EST from his own house. The video sessions are also shared on the Kennedy Center’s YouTube account as well as on their website.
Another fun way to encourage your children to tell stories and do art at the same time is with the Me Books Storytelling Guides. The guides are specially designed as an extension to the stories in the Me Books Plus App. They are filled with fun crafts, puzzles, stickers and many more activities that would help children to deepen their understanding of the subject that they have read. Parents can download it from the Me Books website here!
Now that you have the do hows at your fingertips there is no need to stress yourself any further. Get your children into their new routines, get them to plan their activities and go ahead and start those projects or crafts that you have been meaning to do. And while you at it why not make storytelling a MUST DO to get your children snuggled into storytelling where they could temporarily escape and go beyond the pages of the book.
Redeem the code "MBCOSAFE2020" at store.mebooks.co/redeem
Download the Me Books Plus App here:
https://apple.co/2UjQrOt (iOS)
http://bit.ly/mbcovidasiaplaystore (Android)
Stay safe everyone!
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