During the coronavirus pandemic, Pippins staff began assembling this Home Resources area to help support our families through lockdown. We wanted to ensure that all the children in our community continued to have access to fun, enriching activities and learning experiences, even while the government was asking most of us to stay at home. To date, we have posted over 150 resources in this area, which you can use at home with your children. These activities are meant to engage and inspire you and your children, not to make extra work for you. Therefore, please pick and choose only those activities that you feel are most suitable for your family.
Happy playtime!
Do you have an aspiring pirate at home? Get them excited about lunch time with a treasure map on a plate. This Pirate Map Wrap recipe from ‘Swashbuckle’ on CBeebies will get your child involved in making their own lunch, using their imagination, and – hopefully – tasting some new foods.
You will need:
Salad leave
Tortilla
Grated cheese
Sliced red & green peppers
Sweetcorn
Sliced black olives
Guacamole
All you need for this game are some sheets of paper, tape and some small balls, like the sort you’d use in a ball pit. Tape the paper down on a hard floor (a hallway would be perfect for this game) so that the centre of the paper pops up to form a tunnel, just like in the photo below from Basteln Ideen und Anleitungen (Craft Ideas & Instructions).
Then challenge your kids to roll the balls through the tunnels. If you have coloured paper, you can get them to match the ball colour to the correct coloured tunnel, or you can assign points-values to the tunnels based on how far away they are. If you have a child-size sweeping brush, toy golf club, or similar, you can up the difficultly level and get your kids to knock the balls through the tunnels – just like real croquet.
Draw the outline of a fish for your child or print this one from supercoloring.com. Then set your child up with a few different colours of paint and some celery sticks. Show them how to dip the end of the celery into the paint and press it to the paper to make a fish scale.
We do lots of printing with different types of vegetables at Pippins, so this is an activity your child may already be familiar with.
While your child creates their fishy masterpiece, visit mom.com for a kid-friendly explanation of what fish scales are and why fish have them.
Photo courtesy of Crafty Morning.
Check out this brilliantly simple copycat game from Basteln Ideen und Anleitungen (Craft Ideas & Instructions). All you need are some different coloured pieces of paper, a bit of space on the floor, and some tape.
Lay out two identical ‘stations’ with the coloured paper. The two stations should be facing each other, and taped down, so they don’t move. The large white paper in the middle helps create a ‘home base’, but is not crucial for the game. Then you take one station and your child takes the other. Take turns touching a series of colours for the other to try to copy.
The video demonstrates this game with 7 different colours and some quite complex sequences, but you may choose to start with just four colours and much shorter sequences as your child gets the hang of it. You can play with your hands or, for a more active version, try playing standing up and jump onto each of the colour blocks. This is a game that can be played over and over and made more challenging for different age groups.
Einfache Idee zum Nachmachen und der Spaß dabei ist garantiert!! 🙂 Geeignet für alle Altersgruppen.
Hier werden gleich mehrere Fähigkeiten auf einmal trainiert; Gedächtnis, Koordination, Mittellinienkreuzung, Spiegelung, kreatives Denken, Vergnügen, Verwirrung und insbesondere werden verschiedene Verbindungen im Gehirn gleichzeitig beansprucht.
Posted by Basteln Ideen und Anleitungen on Friday, 3 April 2020
Don’t throw your empty tissue boxes into the recycling just yet – turn them into monster feet… or dinosaur feet, giant feet, robot feet, astronaut feet. Let your child decorate their feet with whatever craft materials you have available, and help them glue on some claws (cut pieces of paper, felt, or sponges for these). This craft would be a great aid to some imaginative play.
Photo courtesy of PBS.
These two silly videos from GoNoodle, called Banana Banana Meatball and Meow Moo Moo, are all about patterns, and they have some fun, silly dance moves that your kids can follow along with.
Long days at home mean plenty of time to get stuck into a bit of gardening. Help your child develop their green thumb (and eventually their tastebuds!) by planting some vegetable seeds. If you don’t have any seeds to hand, check your kitchen for a tomato or pepper – both of those vegetables have seeds that are simple to plant! This great post from PBS explains an easy way to grow seedling using an empty egg carton.
Help your child practice their phonics with this great Alphabet Water Balloon Toss game from Primary Playground. Use some chalk to draw some letters (you may want to choose the letters of your child’s name, or whichever ones they are currently learning to recognise) onto your driveway, patio or the pavement outside your house. Draw a circle around each letter (tip: make the circles large and spaced well apart to help your child aim). Then give your child water balloons or a sponge and water bucket, call out a letter sound, and have them toss the balloon/sponge to see if they can hit the right letter!
If the weather doesn’t suit getting a bit wet outside, you can also try an indoor version of this activity with the letters written on paper and soft toys to toss.
For help pronouncing the phonetic sound of each letter as your child will learn them in school, watch this video featuring Mr. Tumble from CBeebies.
This imaginative video with Daniella Ballerina and all her cartoon friends is a great way for your budding dancer to learn some basic ballet skills.
If you have a garden, give this Spring Scavenger Hunt from Primary Playground a try with your child.
