Shut in with the children - things to do

SO, in light of the current situation around the UK linked to Coronavirus Covid-19, you have found your self on isolation with the children and you don't know what to do. I  have added some ideas below, not all are mine but some have been copied from posts on Facebook and other sites (I will credit where this is due.) They also don't include them being on technology (bonus). Many can be done with things you have around the house so wont cost anything.

The following items are things i have on a chart from school holiday activities for my children to do.

I hope that the above is readable.

The following lego ideas were taken off a page on Facebook (no idea of the original creator). They do seem a bit hard for some children, but you could alter them to the age of your children.

Also with lego you could make a model and then explain to your children how to make it without them actually seeing your model. EG you need a red piece with 8 raised dots, fix that to the bottom of a green 8piece so you have an "L" shape. this can be a fun activity as you get a wide range of models made.

• Pinterest is a godsend for ideas of things to do and you can find many for different ages.

• Teachers pay teachers website has worksheets if you want to do school type work (there are many free sheets as well as paid ones)

• twinkle has a good selection of worksheets and activities, as does activity village, some are free some are not.

There are many other ideas on my blog, please take a look for some ideas.

Take this time stuck at home to enjoy your children, make it a fun time to take their mind off the worries linked to the virus.

October 7th 2015 - Pass the pumpkin game

October 7th 2015 - Pass the pumpkin game

Last Halloween I came up with the idea of the pass the pumpkin game based on the traditional pass the pass the parcel.  However, instead of keeping going with unwrapping to get the prize each player it landed on took a sweet from the pumpkin, once everyone had had 2 sweets (we only had small numbers playing) the next time the music stopped that person took home the pumpkin and all the rest of the sweets in it.

In the sale after halloween last year I picked up a plastic pumpkin (trick or treat bag) that we could use for this years party.  Today I have sat and filled it up with sweets of various types - body parts, lollipops and sherbet straws.  It is now ready to take with us to my friends house.

The kids loved playing it last year as they all got sweets.  And it also made up for the fact that they didn't all go trick or treating before the party.

I have also done this as a train.

August 15th 2015 - Day Camp

August 15th 2015 - Day camp

Today was the day of Badger Day Camp.  I've added the link to the whole board not just 1 pin as this has most of the ideas that helped me to organise and run the day camp.

Although we only had 3 out of 5 children turn up they all had lots of fun and were very tired at the end of a long and packed day of activities.

The above photo collage show our set up and the camping lanterns the kids made. 

We had 1 room set up as a campsite, with tents, Christmas trees, bears, bean bags as seats round the "fake" campfire and a small kitchen area with snacks and drinks.  We had another room for crafts, games and activities.  Some of the activities were done around the campfire.

During the day the Badgers made their own id badges, camp t-shirts, a noughts & crosses game from sticks and stones, they made camping lanterns from tubs, battery tea-lights and tissue paper flames and they made their own stick photo frame which a photo of them at the "camp site" was added to.  They covered many things in short subjects including camp fires and how to get help and where they should go, maps and compasses, things they can  and can't eat in the wild, the importance of hand washing especially outdoors and we used the units UV gel kit - they did really well at it.  They also talked about things you can find in nature - animals, birds, plants etc and did an A-Z of them, after this we went on a short walk to the church gardens where we looked for items that we had talked about and they had a spectrum colour chart and needed to find things in nature for each colour.

After tea the Badgers and some of the adults got into their pj's, brought their blankets and torches and lanterns to the campfire where we had a camping story and sang some campfire songs, they then got into their sleeping bags to await the arrival of parents to collect them.

Each Badger was given a certificate for handwashing, a certificate of attendance and 2 old SJA Badger badges for hobbies and games.  They will all be receiving their Adventure badge and certificate at our next presentation evening.  It was a great day the Badgers were well behaved and all had fun, but it couldn't have happened without the help of the adults from the unit as well.

April 12th 2015 - A wet Sunday

April 12th 2015 - A wet Sunday

Where has the sun gone???  We've had a lovely week and have been outside for most of it, just started to get used to the idea of spring/summer being on the way, I even thought about getting the shorts n stuff out of the box and it rained last night and hasn't stopped today! 

So what better to do on a wet day than play Monopoly Junior with the kids.  We were going to  play my Disney Monopoly but think its too hard for lil man, who has only just got the idea of the junior version.

We have also done some jigsaw puzzles and i'm sure we will end up playing some more games this afternoon.

March 24th 2015 - Bedlam cube

March 24th 2015 - Bedlam cube

I had to got to town today to see if I could get my middle son some jumpers as he only has 1 that fits and my friend is on the hunt for some travel games to take on holiday but hasn't been able to find any so I said would have a look whilst in town.

Well it wasn't a particularly good trip, none of the charity shops had any jumpers in my sons age nor did any have mini travel games, well thats not quite true I had a game called the Bedlam cube.  Now my friends children are younger than mine so sadly I didn't think it would be of use to her but ok for mine.  It says it has 19,186 ways to make it - I took it out of its case and after 10minutes couldn't get it back as a cube. lol!  So I passed it to hubby and he spent a further 10minutes trying to do it and neither of us have managed to re-build the cube to put it away.  I think it may make the kids very annoyed as they will want to do it but may not be able to.

I have looked online and most of the solutions to the bedlam cube are via youtube, nothing you can print off and stick in the box!

However, all was not lost for my friend as I nipped into home bargains as they had games at 49p last week - they had none but they did have travel snakes & ladders for £1.49 and a 4-in-1 kids card game for 99p, plus I got a noughts  crosses for £1.00 from £1 shop.  So I have 3 games to post to her this afternoon ready for going away at weekend.

UV/Glow in the dark party

My eldest son asked for a UV/Glow in the dark party for his 12th birthday.  Now for most people this would have been a major panic, not for me though.  That's because 2years ago myself and a friend had planned to have one of these, sadly it didn'y happen as her husband was taken ill, but I did still have everything that we had bought in readiness for it - everything from paint to paper, straws to lights.

I had loads of ideas on a Pinterest board about UV and Glow in the dark.  This was a great help and gave me lots of ideas.  We hunted for an invite we liked but couldn't find one so we made our own, along with an instruction card -

instruction card

invite

 

These were printed out on paper, they would have been better had we been able to print in really bright colours, but never mind.  Son's friends all thought they looked good.

As soon as son said this is  what he wanted for his birthday we set about how we could decorate the house (yes we were hosting it at home!)  Well as loom bands were a big thing and they had a few that were glow in the dark I thought I would try them under the UV blacklight, they worked.  So when I next went to town I bought a handful of glow in the dark and UV reactive loom bands, I also contacted a friend that had them in her shop and she sent me loads (I paid her for them).  And we set about making chains and adding neon triangles to some of them.

We also had a play about with the UV face paints that we had to see what effects we could get.  They were pretty good and I did gets loads of comments from friends on facebook.

Big thick lines and patterns didn't look as good as thinner ones, and as with the star above the colours do mix and blend into each other.

We painted a sheet with neon paint and I was really pleased with how that looked, and we painted white canvas's as they were spare (i'll explain further down).

 Next to the canvas is a giant glow stick and a pringles tube painted black and then painted patterns with the neon paint.  Also pictured above is the shot glass sphere that is only half as I never finished it.  The shot glasses were the neon ones from £1 shop all glued together (see below).

We also had glow sticks made into balls, and glowsticks scattered all about the house to glow.

 As far as I am aware that is all of the decorations sorted and included on here.

For the party bags I bought clear celophane bags (son asked why no fancy party bags) and as I explained to him, being clear the UV light would work with what was going in them.  They had sherbert straws (£1 shop for 48), they had a glow in dark tattoo, a yellow stretchy man (glows under uv light), a bag of tic-tacs and nerds (mixed in clear bag) and a rubber stretchy ball thing.  All of which glowed under the light.

Lastly was the canvas - I bought an A3 blank canvas and had some UV and neon pens.  The idea was that everyone wrote the birthday boy a message in the pens and they would glow under the UV lights.  Everyone did write messages and it looked great under the lights.  These were a pack of 3 with 2 smaller ones that we just painted.

 

We started off the party with the normal lights on and no UV blacklights or disco lights on.  Once everyone had arrived and had got facepaints if they wanted it, neon moustaches, glow loombands and glow sticks and glow necklaces we turned on the disco lights only and main lights off, then me and hubby turned on all the UV black lights and all you could hear was "WOW" and "OMG i'm glowing" and "This is wicked" from son's friends.  My mission was complete and a success!!!

I had a few games organised which we did, I can't post photos of them as they have otehr peoples children in.  But the first we did was "Pass the camera".  Think along the lines of pass the parcel, except when the music stopped they were meant to take a photo of themselves (camera was set to party without flash).  Well they were taking them of each other.  We have heads cut off, part heads, part of my lounge etc, but all have made for good keep sakes for son.

We also played pass the parcel, in which there was forefits written on neon stars so they showed up under the UV lights.  Then we played the "Glow stick toss" game.  I had made a game board from a white shower curtain, cut shapes out and edged them with tape and then glow in dark tape so they could be seen and fixed it to my washing line pole and a pole across, I taped carrier bags to the back to catch the glow sticks.  (see  below).  Each shape gave the person a differnt amount of points if the glow stick landed in it.  They had 10 glowsticks each.

 Lastly I had 4 coloured glass bottles that had a glow stick inside, using the glow sticks from the glow toss game I made them into circles and they had a game of glow stick hoopla.

Prizes for games included glow axes (25p in the works sale), flashing glow necklaces (59p each from home bargains) and a tub of glow sticks (69p from home bargains).  For food we had normal party food as I couldn't be doing with trying to find foods that glow, and some that I found online as meant to didn't.  His cake was also meant to glow as the icing was made with neon food colours but sadly it wasn't brilliant, so I stuck glow sticks in it!

Everyone had a great time and here is a few pics of my sons.

the birthday boy

the birthday boy

his cards under the uv light

his youngest brother

his youngest brother

middle brother

middle brother

Pirate party the event

Well after a mad couple of months of preperation for the pirate party the day of it arrived, and no it didnt go to plan!  This was NOT my doing but the weathers - 2days before the wind got up really strong and our heavy weight gazebo buckled and took flight.  1day before it rained all day and all night so was too wet on the grass to do most of the games so panic set in as to HOW I could do it all indoors.  The answer to this was move table from lounge-diner into small kitchen and move small sofa into dining area, which gave more room in lounge.

I started hanging the bunting around my room, really pleased with how it looked -

1 of the mums even said she wouldn't have had the patience to sit and make them.  We hung a 3ftx4ft skull flag between 2 of the upstairs windows -

 

 and added a cross to the door and a wooden sign on the garden bench -

I also had a mini treasure chest (picked up from sealife centre) filled with gems and coins and necklaces (bought and won in 2p machines on holiday) and we sat a halloween skull beside it -

Luckily the rain held off (even though ground was wet) and we were able to dig for treasue in the sandpit and walk the plank outside -

 

As it was bit windy we couldn't leave the sail/mast in the ship but took them out for a photo - I cant addon here as it contains all the children who were at party not just my own.  We played pass the parcel that had pirate themed forfits in and "canon ball bop" - where they had to keep their canon (black balloon) afloat and if it hit the floor they were out, and pin the patch on the pirate, they really enjoyed the "canon ball busrt" - black balloons which had confetti and sweets in and they had bounce on them to busrt them (so glad I have laminate flooring and it was easy to sweep up) -

All of the food we had was given a "piratey name".  We had:

• captain's cakes (birthday boy was captain)
• dead mans fingers - cocktail sausages
• pirate gems on a stick - fruit chunks of plastic swords
• rat poo clusters - chocolate rice crispie cakes
• golden nuggets - chicken nuggets
• golden rocks - cheese & pineapple
• desert islands - cheese pizzas
• hawaiian islands - ham & pineapple pizzas
• vegetable island - mixed salad bits in a plate with a "carrot n lettuce palm tree"
• canon balls - malteasers
• golden rings - hula hoop crisps
• sea scrolls - wafer tubes with liquorice laces tied round them
• pirates teeth - popcon

The cake stand WAS a circus themed one and had animals all over it - that was until i attacked it with black paint and glued cut out skulls on it.  I think it looked really good.

Everyone seemed to have fun and enjoy themselves, which is the main thing.  My lil man said he loved his birthday party.



OH AND AS A LAST THING - I have already stated the planning and decoration making for my eldest birthday in November which is neon/UV/glow in dark - watch this space!!!