This post is for all those parents and older siblings going crazy at home right now. No, I have never been a parent, but I do have a lot of experience as an older sibling! Here are some of my best suggestions for surviving with younger kids at home from school (or even for those not-so-young kids and adults who are willing to forget their age and have fun).
Dust off your Imagination
Peter DeBroom made a divine dance partner!
Use your imagination! It is one of the best gifts God has given us! I know that our imaginations can seem to disappear as we grow older, but let me assure you that with a little exercise your imagination can become as strong as when you were a child (and that is a good thing!) So start exercising it and encourage your children to use theirs as well. Kids really don’t need someone to always help them occupy their time. With a little imagination, my siblings and I would transform a rocking chair, piano bench, blanket, and two stick horses, into a covered wagon, and our living room became endless prairies as far as the eye (or imagination) could see. Blankets are turned into ball gowns or heroes capes. Laminate flooring becomes an ice rink as you “skate” around in socks. Really, there is no limit to what you can come up with when you use your imagination. If you don’t like the idea of using your imagination (or of your kids using theirs), then you might as well stop reading now, because you are going to need it with the rest of my suggestions.
Do Art
Obviously, art is going to be high on my list. And by art, I don’t necessarily mean a masterpiece that you will hang on your wall (of course, if you achieve that, I won’t complain…) I just mean pull out whatever art supplies you have and create something! Paint, pencils, markers, crayons… whatever you have will work. Younger artists should just be encouraged to have fun! For those who want a little bit of a challenge, help them find an object around the house or a photo and work on looking at the shapes that make up the object while drawing it. And for those who are too self-conscience to try drawing/painting something themselves (even in the comfort of their own homes…), there are plenty of free coloring pages online that you can print off at home.
These coloring pages were done on a girls camping trip. Everyone chose a page and started working on it. After a few minutes, a timer went off, everyone handed their picture to the person next to them and then started coloring the page they had just received. This continued until all the pictures were finished.
If you want this to count as school, have your kids illustrate something from their history lesson, or do a nature study for science. Of course, art itself can count as school without being tied into any other subject!
Make Crafts
Arts and crafts are often grouped together, but I feel that they both deserve their own section. Crafts are extremely fun! They don’t have to be complicated, and they don’t have to come in a kit. Younger kids don’t need a lot of structure with their craft time; they will just enjoy being creative. Give them a few guidelines (like, “don’t put the glue-stick in your mouth”), and let them have fun! There will be a mess, but that’s okay. It’s part of being a kid. For a fun family time, pile a random assortment of craft supplies in the middle of the table, come up with a theme, and have everyone create something that fits the theme. Here is an example~
Due to mold, we were out of our house and living with a family from church. One day we all decided to make crafts that were house/home related. We didn’t have much in the way of craft supplies as everything was packed up so we pulled together a random assortment of materials. Egg cartons, cardboard boxes, toothpicks, plastic beads, paper, fabric scraps, and anything else we could think of. The result was an afternoon of creative fun!
If that sounds overwhelming, you can always look online for ideas, (because of course that isn’t overwhelming at all).
Up-cycle
Up-cycling is just a nice way of saying that you give trash a new life. Again, some people would put this into the crafting category, but not me. Up-cycling is more than just crafting! It is taking crafting to a whole new level! It is giving purpose to something that no longer has purpose, and having fun in the process! Actually, kids are great at up-cycling. The two year old in our house found the cardboard tube from a toilet paper roll and thought it was the greatest toy ever! And boxes! Don’t get her started on the incredible possibilities of boxes! And there isn’t even any crafting involved with that, just imagination. As children get a little older, they will want scissors, tape and markers with their boxes and cardboard tubes. For teenagers and adults, try challenging yourself a bit more. My favorite way to up-cycle is to take old clothes and turn them into stuffed animals. There is still a lot of good fabric in clothes that are no longer wearable.
This little mouse was made out of old socks.
The wonderful thing about up-cycling is it is very inexpensive and the options of what you can do are limitless.
Play Games
Games are a wonderful way to pass the time together as a family. There are your traditional store-bought games to get you started, but then you can take it to another level. Make house rules or take a normal, simple game and give it a slight twist. It sounds weird, I know, but we still have fun playing Double-deck Go Fish, even though we aren’t five year olds. Actually, we started playing it with our younger siblings when Caleb and I were in our early twenties. It all began when we decided to play with two decks of regular cards. For some reason, we couldn’t stop laughing! (I know, we’re weird. I admit it.) And then there was the time we decided to play Clue in the whole house. We all were the suspects and we gathered a random assortment of household items as weapons. We rolled dice to determine which room we went into, and everyone moved together. The best part was figuring out which of our siblings was the murderer.
Go Outdoors
If you are blessed with a yard, take advantage of it! I spent a lot of time playing outside while growing up, and I loved it. Climbing trees, digging in the dirt (or mud), playing tag, dodge-ball, side-walk chalk, riding bikes, hot lava monster, and just make believe. Of course, you have to be okay with your kids (and maybe you) getting dirty. (But isn’t that why garden hoses were invented?)
If you are too “mature” for such “childish” activities, then get outside and pull weeds! Go for a walk, or just sit outside with a good book. Fresh air and sunshine are good for everyone!
Build a fort
Outdoor forts are pretty awesome, too!
Blankets and bunk beds are a great place to start when building forts, but tables and chairs work well too. Pillows, couch cushions and boxes are also helpful. These make-shift structures probably wouldn’t hold up if you have the ceiling fan on high, but with a little imagination, they can be anything you want. A log cabin in the woods, a castle for a princess, a pirate ship in the middle of the ocean, or a cave deep in the mountains, are all possible with a little creativity.
For those who don’t have someone little to build a fort with, why not pitch a tent in your backyard, if it’s warm enough, and camp out overnight? Or, if you don’t have a yard, set it up in your living room. Roast marshmallows over your stove top and sip hot chocolate.
Do Chores
Okay, now you really will think that I am weird, but you can make chores fun. Letting your little ones help with unusual chores will make them feel special. Oiling the wood furniture and polishing silver were two of the fun chores at our house. You can also make chores fun by playing games while working. Our favorite games to play while folding laundry were the silent game and a game that we made up called “No no’s”. A strange name, but descriptive. How you play is simple. Just have normal conversations but don’t use the word “no” or any form of it including shaking your head or sign language. We also included “know” or “knew” in our list. The last one to successfully avoid all those words wins. This game is a great exercise in thinking before you speak. Competition is also a fun way to do chores. We would sometimes compete to see who could mate the most socks. In a family our size, there were always a lot of socks needing to be matched.
Sometimes, just doing a chore together makes it fun.
Read together
I love to read! My love of books came from my Mom, who read to us all the time. Reading is actually another good chore time activity. We would do laundry, mop the floor, clean the kitchen, just about anything if Mom would read to us. There were even times when someone would run to see if there was another load of laundry to fold if it meant prolonging the reading time. This is also a great way to slip some more school time in. Find interesting books (preferably books that tell a story whether completely true or fiction) that tie into what your kids are learning in school. If you don’t have a large personal library, you can always find books online to read. If at all possible though, I would recommend real books with paper pages. It adds to the suspense when the reader has to stop in the middle of a sentence to fumble with turning the page. If you really hate reading out loud, there are also audio books that you can find online and listen to together.
Watch a Movie
And yes, you can always put on a movie. I would encourage you though, to watch movies with your children. It is a great opportunity to discuss what is good and admirable about a character as well as what mistakes that character made and what they should have done differently. Ask your kids questions. Who was their favorite character and why? What was their favorite scene and why? Was there anything they didn’t like about the story? Watching a movie should never be a mindless activity. Discuss it. Look at the worldview. Talk about it from an artistic standpoint. Tear the thing apart (in a good way). Just don’t turn off your brain when you turn on the TV.
Hopefully, some of these suggestions will be helpful, but if not, maybe reading about how different our family is will at least make you thankful for yours. The truth is, I wouldn’t trade my crazy family for anything, and I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to grow up using my imagination.
Have fun at home!
~Elisabeth~
Most of the photos in this post are several years old, but only because I couldn’t get my siblings to pose for current ones…