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If, like us, you’ve got to that stage of lockdown with your children that you’ve wearied of Mr Wicks, have painted more rainbows than a leprechaun’s seen the end of and tie-dyed anything remotely wearable (scrunchies, socks, pants), then we’re here to help with a bumper blast of stay-at-home ideas to stop the family going completely feral.
GO ON SAFARI
With the corners of our childrens’ worlds now only extending as far as the nearest parks and newly discovered local woods, transport them – virtually at least – a little further afield. WildEarth takes kids on live, interactive game drives in the Kruger or Masai Mara, and they can ask expert naturalist questions (‘why do boy lions have hair?’; ‘how big is elephant’s poo?’) as they go. Watch previous wildlife-spotting drives on WildEarth’s YouTube channel to follow the antics of the Birmingham Boys (a pride of lions first spotted on the Kruger’s western fringes) and Scarface and the Musketeers, who rule over the main crossing point on the Mara.
ART ATTACK
By now even the most paint-phobic parent has cracked, and tapped into their back-of-the-cupboard crafting kit. But give up on that milk-bottle Elmer (the kids did after two minutes anyway) and elevate your output with a little help from the professionals. Tate Kids has a raft of projects from DIY kaleidoscopes and a Picasso-inspired fortune teller to Play Dough sculptures and Warhol-like Pop Art. You’ll also find online tools to help kids create their own virtual street art or share canvases decorated at home using regular paint, or that lesser-known medium of fried eggs and bubbles.
For older kids, London’s Cartoon Museum has guides to scribbling caricatures of famous faces (BoJo; Trump – use as you wish) or ‘finish the story’ comic-strip prompts. Grayson Perry is hosting his Art Club on Channel 4 (week one: portraits; next up: animals). And architects Foster + Partners (best known for The Gherkin and City Hall in central London) have launched a series of architecture from home challenges with printable templates, including ones for building paper skyscrapers.
Instagram, too, is filled with direct-from-the-artist classes. Isolation Art School – set up by Turner Prize winner Keith Tyson – has a daily timetable of classes on IGTV to soon fill your house with tissue-paper stained glass or recycling-bin superheroes. Children’s book illustrator Rob Biddulph hosts twice-weekly draw-alongs, breaking down simple-to-sketch characters such as Sonic the Hedgehog or Nancy the punky spinosaurus. And bird artist Matt Sewell, a favourite with festival-goers over the years for his affable family bird-drawing classes, has now migrated to Instagram Live, where tutorials have covered puffins, owls of all shapes and sizes, toucans and peacocks – all cartoonish, often using easy-to-do geometrical shapes, and accompanied by some unnervingly accurate wildlife impressions.
INDOOR ADVENTURES
Bear Grylls might be better known for eating creepy crawlies and sleeping inside a dead camel on his adventures in the wild, but in his role as Chief Scout he’s put together more than 100 Great Indoors challenges to complete under lockdown. Try making lollipop catapults, become a ‘blackout poet’ or create a jam-jar tornado using sand and washing-up liquid. No bug eating required.
LET’S DANCE
Back away from starting that family account on TikTok (no matter how desperate times are, leave that to the teens) and instead bust your moves with Sadler’s Wells’ family dance workshops aimed at two- to six-year-olds and based on classic tales (Goldilocks, Little Red Riding Hood) or with themes such as shapes and colour. For bigger ones, or at least the more coordinated, Strictly’s Oti Mabuse is putting out learn-at-home routines to earworm songs from all your kids’ favourite films – Frozen, Trolls, The Greatest Showman – on Instagram and her YouTube channel.
SHOWTIME
While parents have Frankenstein at the National and the Soho Theatre’s original production of Fleabag to bring a hit of high culture to our living rooms, kids can check out Little Angel Theatre’s completely sweet staging of John Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back or the London Children’s Ballet adaptation of the much-loved classic Ballet Shoes. The Royal Albert Hall’s at-home line-up also includes performances for mini music-lovers, including opera, jazz and classical sessions for kids.
MAD PROFESSORS
Entertaining and educational? Win, win. The Science Museum has masses of learning-on-the-job experiments to try: make instant ice cream with a ziplock bag (and no freezer), guide a coin through a magnetic maze drawn on a plastic bottle, or build a cardboard-box pinball machine. Meanwhile Dyson engineers have put together 44 science and engineering challenge cardsfor budding brains. Can you push a wooden skewer through a balloon without popping it? Or measure the speed of light using chocolate (and a microwave)?
British Museum
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TOUR A MUSEUM
Google’s Arts and Culture channel has been the story of lockdown for virtual culture-hoppers with its online trove of artefacts and VR world tours. For younger museum-goers, The British Museum is a good bet to explore on a virtual school trip and tie in with those must-study curriculum topics (Egyptians, Roman Empire, Ancient Greece). Over in New York, the MET has a very cool interactive time machine to help you virtually explore its 5,000 years’ worth of art by continent, time and ‘big idea’, with creative projects to explore for each featured work.
BLAST OFF INTO SPACE
Wannabe astronauts can get a glimpse of how earth looks from far above withNASA’s rather hypnotic live stream from the International Space Station (ISS) – dip into the Story Time From Space library for astronaut-read, space-themed books beamed from the ISS to match. The space agency’s new NASA at Home site also has a dizzying array of out-of-this-world resources, from solar-system colouring pages to printable moon journals. Otherwise, simply look up and stargaze from home.
Read our article on how best to stargaze from home here
PIMP YOUR WALK
If all else fails, get outside on your daily state-sanctioned exercise. Mix up that scoot around the park with a while-you-walk activity. For smaller children, try a nature scavenger hunt (The Woodland Trust has a host of printable sheets, or create your own) or crafting woodland wands: wrap a long stick in double-sided tape so they can add their finds. Older kids can do some more serious spotting: birds, trees, flowers (plant identifying apps such as PictureThis and PlantSnap are fun). Alternatively, send one parent ahead with a piece of chalk to create a tracking course of arrows and other symbols around now-quiet residential streets or turn the pavement outside your house into an interactive playground with chalked-out cues to jump, hop, wiggle and star-jump (inspired by A Line Art’s installation at the Southbank’s annual Imagine Childrens’ Festival). The book 101 Things to Do For Kids to Do Outside is a great fallback when inspiration flags.
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