Are you tired of hearing your unhappy child lamenting “I’m bored”? Most children do not need much encouragement to engage in screen time, but it’s time you put their vivid imaginations and pent up energy to good use with some fun, after-school activities.
Fun Activities With Chalk
Children don’t need a chalkboard to be able to have fun with chalk, the driveway or pavement makes a perfect chalkboard. Purchase a few boxes of multi-colored chalk and they can start having some fun by:
- Sketching a shadow – start by helping your child to sketch around the existing shadows on the ground. Once they get the hang of it, use items to make different interesting shadows, and take turns sketching around them. Children will have great fun making shadows for you or their friends to sketch.
- Take turns lying on the ground and draw around your body shape. Children will then love filling in the faces and clothes.
- Decorate the whole pavement with colors, shapes, or pictures, drawn with chalk. Wet the chalk or driveway for different effects.
- Using any patches of grass on the driveway or pavement as hair, complete the picture of a troll.
- Use the whole area and together with your child, design a town. Draw the streets, buildings, and parks and decorate your picture with toy cars, plastic animals, or any item your child wants. With some imagination, this activity can provide endless hours of fun.
- Draw a lifesize board game and use various items, or even your bodies, as the tokens.
Fun Gardening Activities
There are endless ways to have fun in the garden, allowing children to develop a love of nature and gardening from a very young age. Many parents say that spending time in the garden, away from the hustle, bustle, and business of life, has given them time to truly bond and communicate with their children. Some garden activities to do with your children include:
- Planting a vegetable garden. Even if the child is very young, they can help you prepare the vegetable patch, plant, and even water the seeds. Tending to the garden, watching the plants grow, and then eventually harvesting the vegetables, provide endless educational opportunities for all ages.
- Planting and tending to flowers or another garden foliage with your child can also be very rewarding and educational.
- If your child has a vivid imagination and loves fantasy, help them to design a fairy garden. They can personalize it by painting rocks and stones in various colors and placing all sorts of fairies and mystical creatures in it. This can provide your child with many hours of entertainment and also be quite an unusual feature in your garden.
- Children of all ages are fascinated by wheatgrass because it sprouts from a seed within three days. Try filling empty eggshells with some potting soil and planting wheatgrass in them. When the grass is long enough, crush the eggshells and plant the wheatgrass sprouts, shell and all, in the garden.
Fun Water Games
Children love water games. It is also a way that the whole family, from the youngest to the oldest, can have fun together. Some ideas on how to have fun with water:
- Blowing soap bubbles – This provides endless hours of fun, for young and old. Making a soapy solution from baby, no-tear shampoo will ensure that even if the bubbles go near your child’s eyes, there won’t be any tears. The older the soapy solution, the larger the bubbles, so always keep some handy.
- Provide each child with a water squirter and play hide and seek with a twist.
- Make the most of a hot summer day, fill a large bowl with warm soapy water, place it in the garden, and wash all your child’s toys with their help. It won’t matter how much mess they make or how wet they get.
- Fill a bath or large basin with water, provide your young child with funnels and various scoops, and teach them to pour water from one item into another. Most young children love being immersed in and allowed to play with water but must never be left unattended.
- Using different colorants, make jugs of water in different colors, and allow the child to mix them and make new colors. Freeze the different colored water as ice cubes for future use.
Fun With Cardboard
Most children love playing with cardboard boxes of any size. With a little imagination, some paint and a few other articles found around the home, cardboard boxes can be magically transformed into:
- A puppet theatre – Decorate the box to resemble a theatre and entertain little ones for hours by bringing their toys to life.
- A mini kitchen – Using boxes of various sizes, help your child to construct a stove, fridge, countertop, table, chairs or any other kitchen item, and spend many hours playing in their “kitchen”.
- Large boxes can be magically transformed in rockets, spaceships, convertibles, or houses/forts. Ask your child to choose a theme and with a little imagination, transport yourselves into another world.
Have Fun Dressing Up
Children love role play and dressing up. Allow children to use any clothes in your closet or theirs, and have an afternoon where you dress up as:
- Granny and Grandpa /mom and dad
- Rockstars or superheroes
- Teachers
- Policeman/nurses or any other imaginary person
Allow them to wear your shoes, hats, jewelry, make-up, or any other item of clothing, and be prepared to be surprised by how much fun they have.
Parkland Children’s Academy Believes That Playtime Is Vital To A Child’s Development
Parkland Children’s Academy is dedicated to children’s physical, social, and emotional wellbeing, and believes that playtime is vital in this process. To find out more, contact us Monday to Friday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 954-688-5877. Here, we make learning fun!