Modify home environment, include fun activities to engage kids indoor: Experts

Children are restricted from going out to play during corona times and there are not many options available for them to play within the house. Here are some of the suggestions from developmental psychologist Akansha that she gave during her talk with Newstrack sub-editor Guarav Chhabra that will be helpful for parents to engage their kids indoors during these tough times.

Expert said: "Outdoor games can’t be replaced, but it’s a situation in which access to outdoor activities is not possible and outside our safety zone. In such a scenario, we can modify our home environment and include some fun activities using material that is already available at our homes." There are many resources on Internet, however few of my favorite are:

# Using home furniture to design an obstacle course at home. For example, we can include gross motor activities like commando crawl, jumping, crawling under the chair, walking on pillows, crashing on bed etc. which will be full of fun and also help kids to cater to their body needs.

# Using material like bottles as skittles, bed sheet as a swing, using games like scavenger hunt to find things or do cleanup can be engaging for children.

# Exploration: It’s a great time to facilitate children enhance their exploration skills by different mediums, whether it’s a new cooking technique, doing some pretend play or just sitting and reflecting or even getting bored. These all are equally important for development.

# Activities like washing pulses, soaking rice etc can be fun things for kids and making kids responsible for them will ease our work and they will also learn to be responsible.

# Messy Play with aata, sooji, shaving foam, paints, balloons, bubbles etc can be some fun indoor sensory stimulating activities.

# Also, games like Dance and Freeze, Four-corners, making a cave out of bed sheet/dupatta do not require much space and could be easily done at home.