My Kids Are Now Home and I Don't Know What To Do!
The world has turned completely upside down. I wake up in the morning now and for a brief second feel like I had the worst dream imaginable, but then the reality kicks in. COVID-19 is everywhere and we are practicing more and more extreme measures of social distancing by the day. It is affecting every human on the planet in one way or another. Most of us with small children at home are trying to figure out what we do with them or how we work while taking care of the high demands of a small child. Other parents with older children are struggling to figure out how to explain these unusual and frightening circumstances to their children who are too young, but also too old. These older kids understand, but they don’t fully grasp everything so they just end up afraid. This is worse than those monsters under their bed or in the closet because we are also fearful and have a hard time explaining it. I have a 20-month old toddler at home and I am pregnant with my second. I am a pediatric speech-language pathologist and also own two businesses (indyspeechservices.com and theindylab.com) with staff and employees. I have had to rethink not only the entire structure of the day, but how to pivot our services while keeping my toddler engaged, happy and in a good mood. It’s been insane! I realized how extraordinarily challenging all of this is in the midst of figuring out what the “right” thing to do was to keep our family safe given the COVID-19 situation and how to keep my toddler active during this time. In the end, I don’t have many answers but I do know a few things about keeping kids active based on my experiences as a mom, but also as a pediatric speech-language pathologist. Hopefully, this list will add a sense of normalcy to your day, while also giving you an idea of activities that help promote cognitive, speech and language development. To get more of a background and ideas that focus on early academic skills, please check out our two e-books online: Foundations for Learning Literacy and Early Literacy Activities.
Themes!
When thinking of activities to try at home with your kids, it is often easier to think of a sequence of activities if you think of a theme. And, thinking of a sequence of activities means more time spent being busy and learning rather than having our kids run crazy! For example, the weather is warming up so talking about how the seasons change would be a great theme! A few activities you could try are things like drawing or making a collage by cutting out pictures in a magazine (like a clothing magazine) or newspaper of things related to the change in season. You could categorize foods in the fridge that are “spring” foods vs “winter” foods. You can talk about how people go camping in the spring and discuss all the canned foods you’ve got stocked up! Camping can then bring into it a discussion of the places where we camp (use Google Earth!), the equipment we need (check out REI or other online camping stores) and discuss the animals on sites like dogonews.com! Thinking of a theme and pairing it with a sensory (a whole-body touch experience) works wonders to get kids engaged and happy!
Ideas for themes:
Seasonal changes
Transportation
Weather
Holidays
Family
Clothing
Home life
Farm
Community Helpers (great time to talk about this right now! Discussion of doctors, firefighters, teachers, etc)
Sensory ideas:
Water play
Sand
Grass / Dirt (yes, we need to get dirty!)
Shaving cream or whip cream (maybe make your own?)
Beans!
Dried pasta (we have loads of this now, don’t we?)
Cooking!
As a pediatric speech-language pathologist, we work on feeding with kids. We do a lot of work with kids who are picky eaters for a variety of reasons, but there are some essential elements of our work in this area that apply to every child. No child is too young to cook! You can even wear babies and cook with them safely. It is a bonding experience. My 20-month old cooks breakfast with me every morning. She loves standing on her little step stool and peering over the edge to watch as we first pull out (and narrate) all of our ingredients, discuss each step and then find the dishes, bowls, and spatulas we will need for the recipe. She becomes my little sous-chef! She loves having a role, even if it is throwing out the plastic wrapping of certain packages or stacking our cups or bowls, and it keeps her really busy at the same time. We made muffins about 4 weeks ago and she is still talking about them. This activity is not only time-consuming (a good thing right now!), but it works on kids’ executive functioning skills. They have to learn logical step-by-step sequences, organization, time management (how a timer works, which prompts the discussion of time) and attention/memory. It is one of the best activities for kids because it usually winds up at the dining room table, all sitting together, bonding and eating the delicious meal you have both prepared!
What to cook?
Pancakes / Crepes / Waffles
Cereal (it’s simple, but still a step-wise approach)
PB & J sandwiches
Arepas (for those latin food lovers!)
Yogurt (adding in all the toppings)
Pizza
Muffins
Cake
ANY recipe that has a good amount of prep before cooking on the stove or in the oven!
Get Old-School
For many of you, you have older kids that the above activities are a bit too elementary for. I challenge you to get back to the old-school way of doing things to motivate kids to spend time reading and writing. Talk about sending friends actual MAIL and PACKAGES (whoa!). Get them excited about building a care package for their friends and mailing it to them. Figuring out what they might include, trade (Pokemon cards anyone?) or even make would be such an amazing activity for them to think through. Have them make a list of things, get creative and even BUILD the box where the package would go in out of cardboard or shoeboxes. Use gift wrapping paper to wrap the box and have them decorate it with colors, markers, paints or stickers. This is such a unique way of continuing a friendship and building connections during this challenging time. At The Indy Lab, we are facilitating two unique programs related to maintaining kids’ connections called Video Stories and Pen Pals. Kids get partnered up and they make weekly videos or write a weekly letter to a new pen pal after we review the content for academic skills like grammar, spelling, logical storytelling and more. Check it out here: TheIndyLab.com.
Don’t forget to share these ideas with others that might need them right now and follow us on Instagram @theindylab to see how I will be spending my mornings with my daughter, Mareya, while we wait out this storm.
Take care of yourselves!