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Fun Family Lockdown Activities

Lockdown may be easing slightly in the UK, but it is certainly not all back to normal and I for one have been running out of ways to entertain these kids that doesn’t really involve going anywhere. There are only so many times we can go to the park or the gardens of a National Trust property, how ever beautiful… I also know that for many of you in other parts of the world you are still very much locked down so I wanted to share some ideas that have been making life easier around here!

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The new normal

There is definitely, at least for now, a new normal that we are heading into and so there are still so many things we can’t do as a family that would have been our normal. Even when some places are reopening the queues caused by social distancing and the restrictions in place mean it just isn’t as fun or family friendly as it once was and so we, like many other families, are still looking for fun family lockdown activities that don’t involve leaving the house.

If you have a kids lockdown birthday coming up you might also want to check out my 13 ideas for making a kids lockdown birthday special

Using up the kids energy

We have found that using up the kids energy is vital to keeping the peace at home. This seems to be especially necessary for our boys who tend to get quite angry and miserable if they haven’t been able to get out and about. So what do you do if the weather is rubbish and you can’t get outside, but your kids need to be more active there are some great indoor ideas here: Energy Burning Indoor Activities for Kids

I decided to ask some of my blogging friends what they have been up and so here are 11 ideas for family fun during lockdown. The brief was the dafter the better fun family lockdown activities so silliness abounds in this list and we hope you enjoy trying them out.

11 Fun Family Lockdown Activities

Recreating famous pieces of Art – This one came from Ella Jones at Typical Mummy and she in turn was inspired by Martina at Empty Nest Mummy. You choose a famous painting and use what you have at home to recreate the image with your kids. I am thinking I might need to do The Scream as that is how I feel after a day of homeschooling 😉

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A post shared by Ella-Typical Mummy Family Blog (@typicalmummy) on Apr 7, 2020 at 4:44am PDT

Emma from Dirt Diggers and Dinosaurs has suggested trying the colour challenge. She was inspired by Rowena Meadows to do a scavenger hunt around the house for anything they could find that was RED for a photo! And yes, that is a red dinosaur wearing a Christmas jumper!

I love this balloon idea from Kate at Dark Tea. Her son came up with the idea of putting a prize inside a balloon, adding water and taping them to a door. They took turns to pop one with a pin, and the winner was the person with nothing inside their balloon. This is genius. We are definitely going to try this the kids will love it.

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A post shared by Kate Davis (@katedarktea)

We are with Emma from www.happyfamilyhub.co.uk with being super thankful for all the warm weather during lockdown. She and her family have been having water bomb fights and we have too. Kids do just love them. Emma says she has spent the majority of time filling up water bombs, but that the look on her daughters face and the sound of her giggles makes it well worth it.

Top Tip from me: the Zoru bunch o balloons is totally worth getting to save time and energy for water balloons

Clare Lush-Mansell Has been doing ice-hacking challenges! Put some toys into a plastic container (we use old boxes of butter) top it up with water, freeze each container (one for each member of the family) and once it frozen, remove it from the container, sit at the container (one for each member of the family) and once it is frozen, remove it from the container, sit at the table in the garden (ideally) wearing googles or sun glasses and start hacking away to release the toys. The winner is the person who releases all of their toys first!

Now for a sweet one… Victoria from The Growing Mum has been entertained by her neighbour’s kids from over the fence. They have been wearing weird and wonderful costumes, which her kids find hilarious, to animatedly reading out stories. This is such a cute idea. I am sure my kids would love to put on a show.
How about this one from Stuart at Father-Hood a toy zip line. If you want to try it then you need string, a clip and a freezer bag with handles. Check out Stuart’s site for all the details.
Hayley from Miss Many Pennies has been busy building dens inside and outside with whatever they can find and even made a teepee from an old cot – ingenious!!

And now some silly, fun family lockdown activities from me. These are just some of the daft family lockdown activities that we have tried over the past few weeks:

Create Stocks…

Take a cardboard box and get the kids to decorate it. This activity is a two for one in that way as it takes up time and is fun for them as a craft activity first. This also helps to build the excitement for the main event…

Once you have created the stocks its time to fill up the bucket with water and sponges and convince daddy to take his position to get splatted with them! It is a great one to do when your other half is slightly driving you round the twist too!! (Don’t tell him I said that)

Make a crepe paper obstacle course…

We did this for our kids birthdays this year and after setting it up we of course decided that mummy and daddy needed to join in too.

All you need is crepe paper, blutack and time to put up the paper. The kids then wouldn’t let us take it down for hours and did the course again and again. All fun and games until you need the loo at aged 40 something and after having four kids… You have never seen a woman commando crawl that fast!

A slip and slide

This has to be the most fun I have had in the garden… It was hilarious watching the husband throwing himself down the length of the garden and having a go myself was both terrifying and soooooo much fun.

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If you can get hold of one I totally recommend giving it a go. Being childlike and silly is good for the soul

Hold a fake School Fete

We did this on the day that it should have been our school May Fair. It wasn’t my idea I must admit. It was done as a fundraiser for school and we had a great afternoon. We set up some traditional fete games like hook a duck and a coconut shy (with cans) and I even tried my hand at face painting and got some of those little striped sweet paper bags and filled them with haribo for a lucky dip. We also of course had a pimms tent for mummy and daddy!!

What have you been up to during this strange time and what have you got planned for the summer? I am thinking we may need lots more silliness to keep us all sane if we can’t go on holidays so do please share your ideas in the comments.