Once we were thinking of an ultra-modern digital world equipped with various electronic gadgets, but recently the pandemic Covid-19 effect just has turned our expectations out. Nowadays, we are struggling to take away our kids from these glossy computerized devices to reduce their screen time. We are here with ten ways to engage your children meaningfully at home without electronics.
Smart Ways to Entertain Children without Technology
10 ideas are given below to keep your child engaged at home, free from screens and gadgets:
Gardening
Children always love to play with mud and sand. So, let your kids get their hands dirty in the garden. Gardening is the most suitable way to pamper your child in nature. They will enjoy playing with different flowers and vegetable plants. It would be more exciting for them when their plants blossom. That would be priceless. If you don’t have enough space to make gardening, don’t worry about that. You can try terrace gardening or put a few pots near the window sill.
Art and Craft
Art and Craft activities help the children and toddlers focus, pay attention to details and improve their hand-eye coordination, color sense, fine motor skills, nurture their creativity, and more. Therefore, your kids need to provide age-appropriate art and craft materials and lead them to their ability level. Fascinate them to be skilled in different areas. Allow some silly mistakes by them and encourage their creative works and expressions.
Ensure a supply of art and craft material according to the precise interest of your child. Some handy materials are Drawing and painting, Papercraft and origami, Sewing and knitting, Clay modeling Beadwork, basket weaving, Fruit and veggie art, Carpentry, and more.
Reading accelerates the kid’s imagination and surely helps them improve their conversational skills, comprehension, storytelling and writing skills, and vocabulary. Once she is enchanted into a book, it can keep her affianced for hours.
Provide your child with endless numbers of books from fiction to nonfiction, adventure to fantasy, biography to thrillers for his or her self engagement. Keep some preferable books ready for your child to pick up and read whenever he or she chooses. Read to your younger children regularly. Have your kids write and illustrate their own storybook or write their own biography through journaling.
Encourage your children to help out in cooking and chores in the kitchen. During cooking, your younger children can help with rolling out their own rotis and washing vegetables. Older kids can help with prepping, cutting, and even cooking. The idea is to get them involved in experiments with recipes. While your child helps with household works, he or she learns a lot of self-help skills that lead him to become more self-confident and independent.
Most of us love to listen to stories from our grandparents when we were children. We never forget those memories. Don’t you still adore the excellent memories you had with them? Really, grandparents have a lot to provide for your kids. They render unconditional love, kindness, patience. Besides, They have a lifetime experience to share that of course have a good reflection of your kids’ life. Kids also love to brighten up their days talking with their grandparents and grandparents would be more than happy to entertain their grandkids!
Games and more
Different types of games you can engage in as a family. There are various exciting family games like board games, card games, chess, hiding and seek, blind-man buff, etc. If you can spend time together as a family to have some fun, this will distract your children from gadgets and tighten the parent-child connection as well. This, ultimately, builds your child’s trust in you.
Obstacle course
Do you know that exercise and fun can go together? Certainly, this is amazing! The obstacle course is one type of game that guarantees fun as well as involves a lot of physical activities. You can convert your grounds into an obstacle course using simple and natural objects such as a ladder, baby bathtubs, balls, chairs, hops, and so on. Ask your kids to cover the obstacle within a short time. This can also be done for your children by using suitable props.
If the brain can get a scope to exercise an occasional challenge, it remains healthy, growing, and sharp. Choose challenges that are not so much easy or so much difficult. With very much easy challenges, they will feel bored and if it is too difficult, they will not want to try. You can try these thinking activities- Jigsaw puzzles, Rubik’s cube, Brain games and puzzles, Word games, Crossword puzzles, Math and logic puzzles, Sudoku.
These brain exercises will boost up your child’s critical thinking, logical, and reasoning skills, all essential in getting your child ready for a future that demands creative thinkers and problem solvers.
Explorations and Experimentation
Engage your kids in explorations and experimentation activities to sharpen their brains. In the kitchen, there is so much experimentation like trying different recipes and trying o innovate new ones. They can also try some science, engineering, and technology exploration tools. Let them make new inventions with recyclable materials. Maybe, these activities do not lead to discoveries, but from these activities, your kids will understand that it is okay to make mistakes and they have to learn through mistakes.
Your child can move, dance, groove through music. Music can also be calming and soothing. So, inspire your kids to turn on their favorite music, along with singing and dancing. If your child can play a musical instrument or sings, encourage him to sing or play his own music. Music plays a great role to cheer up!
These are just a few ideas. Research emphasis for parents and children to spend quality time together. For this, all parents and children turn off all their gadgets for one hour to spend time with each other. Wish this experience will inspire more families to make the gadget-free time a part of their regular routine.
Source: United News of Bangladesh