A question most modern-day parents and caregivers face is how to keep a child engaged at home without devices, and without resorting to impractical or time-consuming preparations for alternatives. Here is a list of activities that can be set up in the home environment quite easily. You can make adjustments according to convenience.
Art & Craft Corner: Encourage your child’s creativity. Create a simple but attractive art & craft space at home that is stocked with age-appropriate materials. The child will be naturally curious about this area and want to explore. Involve them in projects based on their age and skill level. Acknowledge their efforts and encourage their creative expression with positive words instead of aiming for perfection. This will motivate them and they will enjoy their art & craft corner at home. Encourage responsibility by having them tidy up the space as well. Let them do simple stock taking of materials with you, listing what needs to be replaced from time to time. If possible, take them with you when you go shopping for supplies, encourage them to find the items on your list at the store. Depending on age and interest, the children can do activities such as free drawing, painting, dough or clay modeling, paper craft, threading and lacing crafts, beadwork, weaving, knitting, fruit and vegetable art, upcycling waste products into useful crafts such as making a bird feeder out of coconut shells or planters out of old bottles, etc.
Benefits: Nurtures creativity; develops focus and attention to details; improves hand-eye coordination, gross and fine motor skills; promotes independence, decision making and responsibility; fosters colour sense, vocabulary and resourcefulness.
Reading books at home: Encourage regular book reading. Read them a story daily or let them choose to read from a collection of books appropriate to their age. Touch-and-feel books are a great way to get toddlers interested in reading. Have a variety of books at home for children to choose from and keep them readily available within their reach. Try to have a routine for daily reading like at bedtime or in the evening. You could also encourage them to illustrate a story in their drawing book.
Benefits: Improves fluency of spoken and written language; builds vocabulary; better comprehension skills; fosters imagination; develops empathy; improves concentration; helps the child to learn about their world.
Household chores: Involving your child in daily household chores allows them to develop responsibility, feel a sense of accomplishment as they complete tasks and teaches them useful life skills. Younger children can help with cooking prep requirements such as washing vegetables or rolling out dough. Older children can help with cutting and cooking too. From time to time such as on holidays or the weekend, you can even involve them in trying out new recipes using their favourite vegetables, and shopping for the same. Let the children help with simple household work like cleaning, putting out wet clothes to dry, collecting washed clothes once dry and folding them into different piles, putting them into the cupboard, etc. Appreciate their help without expecting them to do it the right way all the time.
Benefits: Learning practical life skills, building self-reliance, developing confidence, and fostering interest in food and healthy eating habits. When children are involved in the preparation of food, they are more likely to be interested in consuming it too!
Puzzles, word and math games: Brain games, puzzles like jigsaw, Rubik’s cube, simple word games, math and logic puzzles keep the children occupied and give a healthy workout to the brain. The puzzles chosen should be appropriate to the age of the child. If they find it too difficult or challenging, they will give up too soon. If the activity is too easy and not perceived challenging at all, they will be bored by it, quickly losing interest.
Benefits: Boosts critical thinking, logical reasoning and problem-solving skills; improves focus and concentration, fosters self-reliance.
Family activities: Family board games, charades, hide & seek are wholesome fun activities that have entertained several generations for decades. You could also have a family story-narration time where each member narrates a simple short story from imagination. To keep it short you could have a time limit for each story. This would teach the children the need to finish a task within a certain time.
Benefits: Family bonding; builds trust, confidence, cooperation and amicability in the family unit. Storytelling improves imagination and language development.
Hobbies: Encourage your child to explore popular hobbies like collecting stamps, coins or shells; gardening; scrapbooking; etc. Appreciate their efforts and support with the tools or materials required when you observe they are keenly interested in pursuing a particular hobby.
Benefits: Improved concentration, motor skills, organization skills, self-esteem and creativity. When children find their efforts bearing fruits, they will feel a sense of pride in their work and get the confidence to try out other new or slightly more challenging activities. They will be motivated to put their best effort whenever they take up a task.
Imaginary Play: Imaginary play or pretend play is an immersive, symbolic play where the child assigns different roles or characters to objects or people different from the natural state. For example, a wooden block represents a bird or a box becomes a castle. Sometimes, they could pretend to be the parent or a teacher and their teddy or toy represents them in the interaction. Use whatever is available around the house. Open-ended toys like blocks, empty cardboard boxes, containers, fabric, really anything can be used for pretend play.
Through pretend play, a child may re-visit real word experiences they have already encountered. This helps them process real-time occurrences and find a way for their mind to accept these as normal. Pretend play lets them safely express their emotions related to such encounters. They may or may not invite members of the family to participate, depending on the play and this is alright. Adults can often get a clear insight into what is in the child’s mind by observing certain repeated actions or words during their pretend play.
Benefits: Healthy outlet to process exposure to various stimuli of the real world. Allows parents or caregivers a glimpse into what may be troubling a child without having to overtly ask the child. Can be easily set up with whatever is available at hand.
Singing and dancing to music: This is easy and enjoyable too. Play your child’s favourite music and let them sing and dance along.
Benefits: Music and movement instantly lifts the mood, burns energy and melts away anxiety for all ages. The gross motor movements during dance strengthen muscles and coordination. Children refine their listening skills as they notice changes in lyrics and tempo. Depending on the selection of audio, children can also expand their vocabulary and improve pronunciation of words.
The above is only a short list of suggestions. Talk to your child, find out what interests them more in the real world (not virtual), and let them explore such activities after making suitable adaptations wherever needed. It will greatly benefit the child, giving them well-rounded exposure, keeping them grounded, developing their brain capacities, human connection, language and motor skills without the harmful effects of screen time or gadget play.
- Blog By
Sumita Sen Mazumdar
Principal – Erode KG Campus
The Indian Public School – Erode.
August, 16 2024 | In Blog 
