The essential list to avoid screens and not go crazy during the long days of confinement that await you

You thought you would work all day in March, between the two school vacation periods of February and Easter, but no! The coronavirus epidemic arrived in the United States of America and the quarantine too, with the closure of schools and colleges. You will, therefore, have to spend at least a fortnight at home with your children, sometimes still young and not independent.

“You can do nothing when you have a little one,” sings Aldebert. Quite the contrary. It’s time to share extraordinary moments with them. Here are thirty tips, ideas, activity projects to do with your little ones. Some are obvious, others less so. A list concocted with the help of the teaching team of a nursery school. So that this confinement, far from being an ordeal, is a great time for family sharing. To teach your young children to develop their autonomy and limit screen time as much as possible. Have fun!
Develop your language
1. Chat quietly during meals. So without television, phone, tablet, radio, or music.

2. Make an imager with photos or drawings cut from a catalog or magazine like.

3. Share a recipe for cooking and preparing meals.

4. Read and reread children’s albums. Because repetition is an important factor in all learning.

5. Write together grocery, supermarket or market shopping lists, letters to grandparents or friends.

6. Play stories with characters, such as Playmobil or cardboard figures that we have made.

7. Sing, learn nursery rhymes or songs, listen to recorded stories to work on joint and memory.
Read also how to occupy your children during COVID-19 lock-down
Get physical activity every day
8. Dance at home.

9. Put your room in music.
Do artistic activities and develop your imagination
10. Paint.

11. Draw, paying attention to the position of his fingers on the markers and pencils.

12. Make plasticine, clay or salt dough.

13. Cutting, gluing, tinkering, making…

14. Listen to music, share your favorite tunes, make musical instruments.
Develop agility and autonomy
15. Learn to really wash your hands for 30 seconds. An ideal barrier gesture against the Covid-19!

16. Learn to blow your nose alone.

17. Make your laces alone and close your zipper.

18. Play with clothespins and spread out the detergent.
Build your thinking
19. Make a calendar and learn the days of the week and the months.

20. Count to set the table.

21. Rediscover all the toys forgotten in his room and rearrange them. This has another advantage in teaching organizational skills.

22. Look at maps, plans, atlases and imagine trips.

23. Play cards, lotto games, memory games, small horses, goose games, dice, etc.

24. Build with Cossy using educational toys such as magnetic tiles or cardboard boxes.

25. Imagine adventures by building a cabin with a sheet placed on a table under which you can hide and go on an imaginary journey!

26. Playing with water, with a basin, the bathtub, the glasses, the bottles…

27. Plant, water plants and flowers.

28. Dress up, dress up and play with old clothes.

29. Mix with water, oil, syrup, salt. and observe!

Check also other parenting tips given here

30. Observe what floats, what flows, the shadows and reflections in the mirrors.