If you feel like you’re running out of ideas to keep your kids entertained during lockdown, fear not. We’ve gathered five fantastic activities to help you entertain your children through this difficult period.

If you’re looking for free homeschooling resources, we’ve gathered a few together in our blog post: free homeschooling resources for parents and teachers.

Get water or chalk painting the patio

Mummy blogger and podcaster Alison Perry suggests letting your children loose on your patio. Equipped with a pot of water and a paintbrush (assuming your patio is dry), you can let your kids create pictures with their water – no washing required.

If you’ve got coloured chalk and don’t mind them drawing on your patio, use this instead to make colourful creations for your backyard.

We spotted these chalk drawings on our daily exercise:

Get building LEGO

Homeschooling resource website Free Homeschool Deals has created a 30-day LEGO challenge, with a printable resource. The challenge helps inspire children (and adults!) to make new LEGO builds each day – and every day presents a new challenge – day two states “NASA needs you to build a new rocket” and day 26 “you’re elected ruler. Build a flag for your land.”

Download your free printable version of the LEGO challenge.

Utilise a toll of old wallpaper 

We’ve noticed this pop up a few times online – and it’s a brilliant idea. It’s an activity that’s fun, educational and creative. With a roll of old wallpaper, get your child to lie down and draw around them. Cut them out and ask them to select an organ in the human body, each day, draw and cut out a new organ from your roll of wallpaper. 

Get them to stick the organ to their paper body. Every day they’re learning about the human body and have the chance to get creative and colour in. 

Brilliant!

Draw along with Rob Biddulph 

Rob Biddulph is an author and illustrator from London. And when lockdown came into force, he used his creative talent for good when he produced tutorial videos on how you can draw spectacular animals for yourself. All you need is a pen and paper.

Rob creates new videos each Tuesday and Thursday, published at 10 am. You can keep up-to-date with the #drawwithrob videos here.

Here’s one of Rob’s latest videos where he shows you how to draw a sheep, watch below. 

Friend pen pals 

Before the era of mobile phones and the internet, pen pals were recognised as a way of staying in touch with friends you met on holiday. Why not revert to this form of communication and get your child to send their friends letters? This exercise not only helps strengthen their grammar and vocabulary, but it also helps them better their storytelling skills.

It’s nice to see their face light up when they receive mail, too!

If you’re struggling with homeschooling, you might find this advice comforting. We spoke with three parents, and they have some tips for you.