Fun activities for kids during coronavirus school closures

Parents up and down the land took a sharp intake of breath at the news that UK schools would close as of Friday to prevent the spread of Coronavirus. It was starting to seem inevitable, but that doesn’t make it seem any less surreal or overwhelming. For me, I think the key is going to be a) having absolutely NO expectations, b) sticking to some kind of a routine and c) not actually attempting to ‘teach’ my kids in the professional sense. But I still need ideas on entertaining two small children all day everyday during this weird time while also trying to work from home, so I’ve put together a list of resources and fun activities for kids to draw inspiration from, mainly for my own sanity.

This list isn’t intended to put any pressure on anyone – goodness knows we don’t need anymore right now – it’s more intended as a collation of as many sources of kid-entertaining ideas as possible in one place, so you can dip in and out according to what takes your fancy. I’m also well aware that in about 7 days time I’ll probably want to smash my computer at the wall after looking at this optimistic blog post…

Nobody’s expected to be fluent in mandarin or reciting Shakespeare by the time this is over, if we manage to get through this without putting the kids on eBay I’ll be happy. I’m also planning on digging out all the board games, reading books, snuggling up with movies, playing in the garden ( gosh that trampoline is worth its weight in gold) facetiming loved ones and a SHIT load of iPad/Kindle time, because they’re all extremely valid and important activities!

But if, like me, you’re slightly bricking it about being home alone with the kids 24/7 for the foreseeable, here’s a ton of fun activities for kids that have been recommended through my networks.

Good luck, stay safe and let me know how it goes!

*Disclosure: This post contains the odd affiliate link, which means I may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that I have recommended. While clicking these links won’t cost you any extra money, it will help me keep this site up and running! 

Games and fun activities for kids

Five Minute Mum

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Natural confetti (/Eco Sprinkles) for craft and play- using petals and tiny flowers with dried leaves. Putting them in clean & dry glass bottles is perfect for kids to shake onto their projects! Tip: Leave the lids off unless the flowers and leaves are all completely dried out, otherwise they might go mouldy! #naturalcraft #nature #craft #kids #eco #ecokids #ecoplay #ecocraft #glassbottles #upcycle #kidsprojects #joy

A post shared by Laura Brand (@thejoyjournal) on Mar 6, 2020 at 9:45pm PST

Miro from Cairo

15 things to do with kids when you’re stuck at home. Fun ideas include ‘spa days’ and dance parties!

GoNoodle®

Dancing Tots Facebook Live

Dancing Tots are hosting one hour sessions on their Facebook page. Boogie along to Disco, Hokey Cokey, the Reach Up Song, Nursery Rhymes, Action Songs, Strictly, Bubbles, Parachute, Ball, Musical Instruments and more!

The Ballet Coach online classes

Dance from the comfort of your own with this free online ballet class schedule from @theballetcoach on her Facebook page.

Arts and crafts

Quick Crafts with Emma Scott-Child

@emma_scottchild will be running an art club starting on Monday 23 March (starting around 2pm when everyone is starting to go a bit loopy) which looks really fun. The idea will be to do a daily project together, sometimes art, sometimes craft, a bit of design too for the bigger kids.

Check out her Instagram post here for a list of materials that she’ll be using – get them while you can! She also says don’t feel like you need ALL of these to participate, she will try to make the projects as simple as possible. She also has a book which is available on Amazon (see below).

Children’s Scrapstore Bristol

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, Children’s Scrapstore have designed bundles of scrap and craft materials, available to order and collect, or buy in store. Each bag or box has been thoughtfully assembled so that its contents can lead to many possibilities!

Scrap Activity Bags – £6

Scrap Activity Boxes – £20

The Artful Parent

Lots of inspiration for crafty things to do at home with kids during the current Covid-19 situation that are fun and creative for the whole family. Think toddler art activities, painting, drawing, clay and playdough, stained glass and suncatchers.

Red Ted Art

Easy arts and crafts for little ones using simple materials, including things like easy paper butterflies, bath bombs, Pokemon paper toys, friendship bracelets and so on.

Kate Woods Craft

Children’s craft instructor, Kate Woods is running a 14-day toilet roll challenge on her Instagram @katewoodscraft!

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⭐ Day 4 of the 14 day loo roll challenge!⭐ King Louis and Princess Louise! You will need- Coloured card Patterned card Pens Pompoms 1)Cut out long stripes for either the beard or the hair of the Princess and glue to the loo roll. King Louis beard is a rectangle of card and then cut stripes all the way leaving a little space. 2) Draw and cut out crowns for both and glue on to the hair. 3) Cut a rectangle piece of card and glue to the loo roll (this is their clothes) Princess Louise has a ‘v’ shape at the top and at the bottom. I also added a little strip of card underneath which is her petticoat! 4) Finally draw your faces and glue a mini pompom to King Louis for his nose.

A post shared by Kate Woods (@katewoodscrafts) on Mar 19, 2020 at 12:38am PDT

Create your own (virtual) masterpiece on Tate Paint game.

The Tate has lots of arty ideas for kids on their website – suggestions for making Pop Art like Warhol, pictures like Van Gogh as well as quizzes and the chance to make your own virtual masterpiece on the Tate Paint game.

Art for Kids Hub

A family of six sharing all kinds of art lessons for kids, including how to draw, painting and origami. They post a weekly challenge on a Saturday to stretch your child’s creativity – see their challenge page for the latest info.

Creative Bug

Creativebug offers online video arts and crafts workshops and techniques taught by top designers and artists. Learn how to paint, knit, crochet, sew, screen print, and more.

The Imagination Tree

Creative art and craft activities for young kids from early years teacher, play enthusiast and mama of four, Anna. She’s also put together a handy stay-at-home survival guide for self-isolating families.

Lots of Lovely Art

Magical educational art boxes full of great materials for children of all ages. Each box contains three leaflets on three different artists, background information on the artist, as well as clear and simple instructions for art projects. Try it out, buy a single box for a one-off creative experience or sign up for a 3-month, 12-month or every-other-month subscription.

Lucy Lost It

Children’s Entertainer in Bristol, Bath, Avon, South Gloucestershire and Cardiff, Lucy, will be running some live workshops and also uploading some fun videos on balloon modelling, magic tricks with everyday objects and Blue Peter style builds. 

Draw with Stevie Harper

A modern-day Tony Hart, Harptoons makes drawing simple and fun. Steve Harpster will be hosting live or pre-recorded drawing lessons for kids on his Facebook page every day at 2pm. The goal is to fill up sketchbooks and have fun!

Cooking with kids

Little Cooks Co

Kids cooking kits – sign up and get monthly subscription boxes containing healthy ingredients that make cooking with children easy, fun and healthy.

What Mummy Makes

Rebecca shares fun family food recipes, suitable from 6 months, weaning tips and advice. She also has a brilliant Instagram account with lots of cooking inspiration.

Eat Eight

Ok this doesn’t actually involve cooking WITH the kids, but if having your children at home permanently is testing your energy levels and with food scarce in the supermarkets, Eight Food has eight nutrient-rich, health-boosting (and super tasty) frozen kids’ meals in its range that can be delivered to your door. There are also lots of recipe ideas on their website.

Outdoor nature activities

edvanced.co.uk

Founded by two experienced Deputy Headteachers/mamas, Ellie and Nicky’s blog is full of educational blogs. From Monday they will be sharing 10-minute ideas to do outside with the kids each day on their Instagram @edvanced.co.uk.  No pressure, just fun and educational.

Kids do Gardening

Inspiring children to enjoying gardening is their mission. See their website, or follow their Instagram account @kidsdogardening.

Treasure hunts

Easy peasy. You know what to do.

Storytime

Bristol Academy of Drama

In these challenging times, what better way to keep your children entertained than with stories? Over the next few days Bristol Academy of dram staff will be posting a video of them sharing some of their favourite stories. Check out their FB page, for details of upcoming stories.

Audible for free

For as long as schools are closed, kids everywhere can instantly stream an incredible collection of stories, including titles across six different languages. The selection includes: kids classics like Peter Rabbit, The Reluctant Dragon, The House at Pooh Corner, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; literary faves featuring Anne of Green Gables, White Fang, Brave New World, and Frankenstein. They also have an impressive collection of folklore and fairytales from around the world! 

Authors going live in real time

Childrens’ authors are doing live book readings to engage children and create a safe place where imaginations are fired. This Guardian article has a round-up of some of the best.

Free David Walliams’ books

David Walliams is releasing a free children’s audio story every day for the next month. You can listen to his daily short stories at any time, with each being released at 11am from 24 March – 23 April. Visit his website for activities, clips, books and more.

Facebook groups

Family Lockdown tips and ideas Facebook group

This Facebook group will be posting ideas and suggestions for both indoor and garden activities that you can do with your children and members are encouraged to post their suggestions! From crafts to challenges, cooking, indoor sports, games, virtual superhero parties and more. You can sort by category which is really hand. All posts will be suitable for the government guidelines for self isolation or should it happen, a lockdown. If you’re finding it hard to narrow down what to do, the admins will post an ‘daily picks’ events schedule every day.

The Best Ideas for Kids

Provides daily kid-friendly things to do inspiration such as tape painting, ingenious toilet roll crafts, 100 indoor activities and Simon Says suggestions.

Laura Symonds homeschool survival ideas

Laura’s ideas put the emphasis on play not panic! She’s well aware that parents are starting to freak out about what their new role entails. One of my favourite ideas of hers is to set up a tuck shop for kids, give them £1 a day to spend and then they have pay for and count their money – take a look.

The Creative Homework Hub

In an effort to help families during the Covid-19 outbreak The Creative Homework Hub is collecting together teachers of all skills and subjects to answer questions and help if they can.

Online learning resources

Phonics Play

Free to use during the Coronavirus school lockdown period – enter Username: March20, Password: Home.

Twinkl

Twinkl are offering a month of free access to parents in the event of school closures. Includes inspirational lesson plans, print outs, schemes of work, assessment, interactive activities, resource packs, PowerPoints and teaching ideas.

BBC Teach

Live lessons for primary schools from BBC Teach. Topics cover all subjects including Roald Dahl, Shakespeare, Blue Planet, Winter Watch and even Doctor Who!

BBC Bitesize Daily lessons for homeschooling

A saviour for parents attempting home learning. The BBC’s biggest ever education offering has launched with daily lessons, teaching resources and classes from familiar faces (Sir David Attenborough has been signed up!)

CBeebies

CBeebies helps pre-schoolers learn while they play fun games, watch clips, sing songs and make things with their favourite CBeebies characters and shows. You can also download free CBeebies games and story apps for kids to help your child learn while having fun and listen to CBeebies radio.

Full Steam Ahead with Brunel’s SS Great Britain

Become an engineer just like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, design ships with a little help from the great man himself, then put them to the test! Can you design a ship to pass all the challenges?

Bristol Old Vic Family Arts Hub

Bristol’s oldest theatre has a whole host of free resource packs available covering loads of subjects and past productions including A Monster Calls, Wise Children and Noughts & Crosses.

Covering Early Years to Key Stage 3, the Family Arts Hub includes a free database of downloadable acting workshops, arts and crafts “how to” guides, drama games, soundtracks, heritage-based lessons, recommended play-reading lists, scripts and monologues, streamed family shows and competitions to get involved with, with more content being added on a weekly basis.

Steve Backshall online homeschool

Home schooling proving tricky? Can Celeb conservationist Steve Backshall help? On Wednesday 25 March at 1pm he’ll be live on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram trying to answer your youngster’s wildlife, biology, conservation, geography and exploration questions. Just don’t ask him any maths. Or physics. Or chemistry. Or… well anything else! Just the animal stuff.

DK Find Out

Discover fascinating facts and quizzes about a huge range of subjects from the Stone Age to Ancient Rome, the Vikings to the Tudors, the Victorians to the World War, animals and nature, music, art and literature, to the human body.

Scholastic

Scholastic has created a free learn-from-home site with 20+ days of learning and activities. Keep the learning going with these special cross-curricular journeys – every day includes four separate learning experiences, each built around a thrilling, meaningful story or video. Kids can do them on their own, with their families. Just find the right grade level and let the learning begin!

Seussville

The Cat in the Hat, Sam-I-Am, Horton and the Whos, and the rest of the Seuss characters welcome you to the home of all things Dr. Seuss, with games to play and videos to watch.

Oxford Owl for Home

Lots of free resources for Primary age children including spelling, phonics guides, times tables, maths games and activities and more.

Paw Print Badges

Free-to-download challenge packs, many activities can be completed indoors. Kids can work to earn badges (which cost but are optional).

BrainPop

Animated Educational Site for Kids featuring Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology.

Mystery Science

To help educators during this time of coronavirus, Mystery Science have pulled their most popular science lessons (like ‘who invented pizza?’ and ‘how to find animals in the woods’ and are offering them for anyone to use for free, no account or login is needed.

Switch Zoo animal games

Make new animals, play animal games, solve animal puzzles, take a guided tour and join a zoo quest. Listen to music performed by animals, watch a dog’s dream, and uncover the Mystery of Switch Zoo. Build a biome and an online habitat, play other learning games, read animal facts and get lesson plans.

Khan Academy

Click for schedule suggestions for students aged 4-18 to be used as templates during the COVID-19 school closures. Adopt as they are or copy and adapt to suit the needs of your kids. Khan Academy are also having daily weekday live streams on Facebook and YouTube for students, parents and teachers navigating school closures. 

Geography Games

Brain-engaging geography games to test knowledge: learn countries of the world, capitals, flags, US States, continents, islands, oceans and more.

World Book Online

World Book Online have just made their fabulous collection of over 3,000 ebooks and audiobooks available for free for children to access at home with books suitable for all ages.

Unite for Literacy

Unite for Literacy provides free digital access to picture books, narrated in many languages.