Children get bored very easily and quickly. My four year old boy starts everything with so much of enthusiasm but then after a while, he complains that he is bored and he needs something new. Young kids have lots of energy and short attention spans. And these days when everywhere it’s the holiday’s season, it’s the mothers who are the busiest species as kids are making them busy with one thing or the other. Children are curious, fiddle with, things and love experimenting. So, if you too are getting short of ideas to keep your kids busy, here are some activities that are sure to keep them entertained for some time for sure:
AGE GROUP: 4-7 years
1. Painting: This is one messy activity this age group loves to get involved in. Give them a whole lot of coloring options like pencil colors, crayons, sketch pens and finally, water colors. While you let them have a free go with colors, make sure you restrict their activity to a designated area or else, you have a lot of mess to deal with. Get coloring activity books in the market that require filling colors within spaces. Add options like painting with vegetable, leaves and fruit.
Help them make personalized greeting cards with impressions on handmade paper. For instance hand impressions; Let your child dip his hands in a plate full of bright colored paint and press them on a clean sheet of paper.
2. Clay modeling: There are a whole lot of options available from colorful play dough to plaster of Paris, dough made of clayey soil or even firmly kneaded dough. Kids simply love the feel, texture and mould able quality of clay. You can have them make different shapes, figures, bowls etc.
3. Making albums: Provide your child with an empty drawing book in which to stick the pictures and a whole lot of old magazines or books from which he could cut the pictures out. Discuss the theme of the album with him once and leave him to make it and even decorate it by drawing boundaries or frames around the pictures.
AGE GROUP: 7-10 years
1. Making scrapbooks: You could encourage your child to start maintaining scrapbooks or albums of different objects like flowers, pulses, grains, insects, festivals, cities etc.
2. Make personalized stationery: At this age, kids are fascinated with stationary items like copies, notepads, and diaries letterheads and so on. You could give your child a few blank A4 sheets and teach him how to bind them together by stapling or stringing. You could also teach him how to make envelops and personalized calendars as well.
3. Beads fun: It is always a good idea to keep a whole lot of colorful, glittery, big or small, plastic or stone beads at home. You could teach your child to sort the beads out color or shape wise and string them in shoe laces or strings to make his own abacus. You could teach your daughter how to make a necklace or a bracelet by stringing the beads together.
ABOVE 10 years
Make sure the activities you plan for them include a lot of opportunities where they can express themselves. For instance recycling trash into crafts which is a very good way of inculcating awareness about environment, depletion of natural resources and the positives of recycling. Kids at this age love gizmos. Give your child a blank cassette and let him record whatever pleases his fancy.