Every mom needs an arsenal of simple indoor activities. I honestly believe that. I mostly believe that because I work from home regularly and have found that meme about “working with kids around is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos” completely true.

This is even worse when the weather isn’t “go play outside applicable”. I work from home on Fridays and the usual game plan is, make coffee, get comfy on garden furniture and work on my laptop while the boys run around. I usually give them some sort of a task like find these objects and it can keep them busy for ages.

“go take pictures of blue things” buys you like 20minutes #hack

But what happens when you can’t have them running around. Well , usually what happens is… “Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy…..” Well with Caleb here too its “Mommy, aunty, mommy, aunty, mommy, aunty, mommy, aunty….”

And then how much do I get done? blue bugger-all, that’s how much.

This past weekend was particularly rainy, and I was particularly busy trying to decipher articles written by business scholars and make it relevant to the man on the street (as a man on the street myself, this was easier said than done) and I needed some peace and quiet. So I went into craft mamma mode and came up with a few ideas.

1. Make play dough like we did on this video….

2. Take a DVD cover remove the inside printed cover and replaced it with white paper. This creates a makeshift dry erase board.

3. Take pictures of things in your child’s room and make a quick collage with it (you know you have the app) then print it or if you trust your child with a tablet/phone let him use the device and try to find all the objects hidden in his/her room.

4. cover a shoe box in white paper and have them make their own doll house/superhero club house with a marker.They can cut pictures out of an ad leaflet or use colouring pencils to get super creative. I was quite impressed with the sun and tree on the outside and furniture on the inside.

 

5. Do some beading. Why not use an old chunky bracelet and have them restring it?  Or cut up a plastic drinking straw, for makeshift beads and string it on to a shoe lace.