Easy and fun activities for children during Covid-19 days: Dr. Marisa van Niekerk
Easy and fun activities for children during Covid-19 days
Easy and fun activities to keep your children busy during cold days as well as during Covid-19 days
One of the most frequently asked questions by mom’s over the years is “What else can I do to keep my children busy on cold and rainy days?”. Nowadays this has become “I’m running out of ideas of what to play”. Or “What creative activities are left, as the lockdown already lasted for 21 days and there are two more weeks to come?”. “My children are so bored now.”
But let’s take a step back, why is play important, and what are the benefits of playing?
What does play really mean?
Let’s just pause for a moment to think why children need to play. Playing is not just keeping your child busy to have peace for hopefully a few minutes (if you are lucky!). A child’s play is an art and science on it’s own. Hymes describes play as ”….. thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problemsolving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimulus he has met.”
What do parents give their children through play – the benefits of playing?
- Physical, body development
Building with blocks – another great play learning activity - Examples: Catching and throwing a ball, running around, climb, building things like houses, cars, robots, etc. (construction play).
- Brain development (cognitive development)
- Examples: Gaining knowledge about the meaning of big/small, loud/soft, up/down; sorting of things according to colour, shape, size and learn to solve problems.
- Emotional development
- Examples: Learn to express his emotions, develops self confidence, helps to better deal with conflict.
- Social development
- Examples: Learns to work together with peers, to respect others, it helps to form his identity and teaches a child about leading and following.
Playing improves concentration
Play improves concentration in children. All the above mentioned areas of development forms the foundation for spelling, reading and mathematics. Please read this again, play is the basis for reading, spelling and maths. For the mom’s who need to keep all the balls in the air (house keeping: cleaning, preparing food, washing, ironing as well as keeping the children busy with activities and play and who are forced to stay within a limited budget) I salute you!
For the mom’s who ‘don’t have time to play’, I hope that you will realise what difference you can make in your child’s development by creating play activities.
Visit my Facebook page for examples of easy and fun activities for children during Covid-19 days
If you are looking for creative easy and fun activities for children during Covid-19 days, look no further. I have put a lot of easy, fun activities on my Facebook page. Pictures are added which make it easy for you to scroll through and to get new ideas. It will also trigger your brain to create new ideas. Have fun!
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